Much debate has gone into the topic of RAW vs Jpeg... If this example doesn't convince you that RAW has merit, I give up.

I shot an event yesterday... A 50th wedding anniversary. I always shoot RAW+ Large Jpeg. If the 7D could zoom the RAW file (I know the 5D can) I would shoot RAW exclusively. However, I like to zoom in and look for blinkers after taking a shot, so I shoot RAW+.

I was taking candids with my camera set for M - 1/60 - f/5.6 - ISO 200 and using bounce flash. I was going back and forth between existing light (f/2.8 @ISO 800-1600) and flash at the above setting. Well, for this shot, I forgot to turn the flash back on, and the resulting jpeg:
http://www.pbase.com/santoguapo/image/52249375.jpg

Well, the stinker about shooting candids is that if you miss the shot, the moment is gone. I saw that I had basically shot a black frame, but did not delete in-camera because I had shot RAW+. I figured I would wait until later and see what I could do with ACR. I opened it up and sure enough I had a bit of detail left in the picture.

Here is the processed RAW. I converted it to B&W because with the amount of tweaking that it took, the color started looking pretty poor:
http://www.pbase.com/santoguapo/image/52249534.jpg

Yep, it's grainy, but I actually like the effect and will definitely give this shot to the client.

If you are interested in my extreme adjustments in ACR, here they are:
EV: +4.0
Shadows: 1
Brightness: 149
Contrast: +25

I lowered the contrast to -100 and tweaked the various sliders in the calibration tab to get the B&W effect I was looking for.

So, are you now convinced about shooting RAW for event photography? ;o)
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Cheerio...
Rich