dSLR peeps; are you shooting in RAW?

[third_shift|studios]

My SONY a300 can capture and store pictures as RAW and jpeg files. I did some side by side playing with this pic I shot of michelle [who appearantly wasn't fond of me documenting her baking buckeyes-notice the twinkle in her eye?]. The one on the Left is the JPEG while the one on the Right is the RAW file edited using camera's supplied program "Image Data Converter". I like how the RAW file maintains colors more truer than PSD does and i was able to soften the grain from the 400speed it was shot with with a few slider bars offered in the program. Just notice how the surfaces on the spice jars, wood grain and her glasses have a much more natural tones than that in the jpeg file.

[third_shift|studios]

taking a second look, i think i blew out the highlights too much in some areas on the RAW image during editing...