What RAW settings should your camera be in?

I personally like shooting raw, but my Nikon D5100 Has different types of raw Like, NEF (RAW), NEF (RAW) + JPEG basic, NEF (RAW) + JPEG normal and NEF (RAW) + JPEG fine. What setting should i put my camera settings in. I Do lots of portraits.

It depends… If you want to edit it with more preferences, you should choose RAW, of course. The others are just saving an extra file; the RAW and JPEG. If you want high quality you should choose JPEG fine, since it's the highest quality.

There's only one RAW setting, and that is RAW. The other settings RAW + JPG provide two photos each time you depress the shutter; RAW plus one of the JPGs.

RAW = a single RAW file.
RAW + JPG basic = a RAW photo and a low-quality JPG photo.
RAW + JPG normal = a RAW photo and medium-quality JPG photo.
RAW + JPG fine = a RAW photo and a high-quality JPG photo.

I use RAW + JPG fine as I like to have the RAW file as a backup if I find the JPG is not at the quality I want. I will typically delete the RAW file if the JPG is OK. But if I need to do any editing, I will edit the RAW file.

If I shoot raw (I normally shoot jpg unless I know I'll be post processing), I just shoot raw. I'll extract the jpg thumbnail images using dcraw (dcraw -e *.nef) when I get the images in to my computer. The thumbnail images are basic quality.

OFF.