Why Raw?

[MTDancer]

Hi,
I am a pure novice and wondered why I should shoot in RAW?
Thanks,
Margaret

[yelvertoft]

Margaret,

Shooting in jpeg format involves the camera doing al lthe work of converting the raw file to jpeg format, In doing this, the camera makes certain assumptions, takes account of all of the settings you have applied on the camera, makes the conversion, and throws away a lot of information in the process.

Now, if, for example, you had left the camera's white balance setting on tungsten from the last time you used it, and were then shooting in daylight, if you were shooting raw, you could correct this very easily using your raw processing software. If you were shooting in jpeg, you could correct it with a lot of faff in photoshop.

Another scenario is when you've misjudged the exposure and got it pretty badly wrong. If you adjust the raw file, you can generally recover a lot more detail than you would be able to if you applied the same adjustment to a jpeg file in the same situation.

If you shoot raw, you can use the bundled software that came with your camera to very easily turn those files into jpegs, just as though you'd shot them as in-camera jpegs. The difference is, you have the raw file, and even if you're not sure right now how that benefits you, when you've figured it out, you can work on the raw file and get the best out of your pictures. If you shoot in-camera jpeg, you're stuck with what the camera gives you. You can turn a raw file into a jpeg, but you can't go the other way back.

[MTDancer]

Very comprehensive. I understand now, thanks

[Alex1994]

Originally Posted by MTDancer

Very comprehensive. I understand now, thanks

There are books written about the subject.

Duncan is correct: the raw file holds more data, which you can use more creatively, but it will take you longer.

[Gidders]

Originally Posted by Alex1994

There are books written about the subject....

I've found "Real World Camera Raw " to be very good <<<LINK>>>

[surfg1mp]

Not a hyjack its related.....Do you make a copy of the raw files and use these to work on? That way the originals can be kept as a kind of negative.

[Gidders]

Originally Posted by surfg1mp

Not a hyjack its related.....Do you make a copy of the raw files and use these to work on? That way the originals can be kept as a kind of negative.

When you work on a raw file you don't actually change it - you just give your raw processing software a set of instructions on how to interpret the raw data when presenting it to your post processing programme. PS & Lightroom then store this data for future use (and further tweaking) andgive you the option of either using the cache, or in a separate sidecar file with a xmp extension, which is what I do so I can share the raw & xmp files between my laptop when taking pictures on site, and my desktop for later processing - so there's no need to duplicate your raw files.

There is a school of though that suggest that your convert you manufactures native raw files to Adobes open source raw files which have a dng extension (digital negative) the idea being that they will still be readable if the manufactures stop support for some raw formats as time goes on ... but its not something I do - does anyone else?