1. To store the most from each
photo.
This is my #1 reason why
photographers should shoot RAW even if they don’t know how to process a RAW
file. A RAW contains all the information the camera sensor recorded from the
scene; if in the future we learn how to edit our photos better or new
applications are created to edit photos, the only way to be able to use these
new tools and knowledge in our photos is to keep the RAWs. Even if you don’t do
anything with them just store them, disk space is cheap and if you ever need
them, then you have them. Imagine a new tool that can do something great to
photos but needs a RAW file as the input…
2. To be able to fix White Balance
The camera Auto-WB setting is good
but it is never perfect and for some scenes it can go badly wrong. In a previous article I discussed some tools to
improve the white balance of your photos. It’s very hard to get a perfect WB in
the camera but it’s easy to do it in post-processing. And you can try several
different color temperatures and find something you didn’t consider in the
shoot. To correct the WB without destroying information you need to shoot RAW.
3. To extend the Dynamic Range
There are several tools and
utilities to create HDR images from a single RAW. The explanation is very
simple: A RAW contains all the exposure information the camera sensor could
capture and that’s more than what a single JPG can represent. So a good piece
of software can use that exposure information in the RAW to create a photo with
more dynamic range compared to the default JPG that the camera creates.
4. To improve our processing options
There’re several good tools to
develop RAW files. Many of those applications can fix distortion, correct
chromatic aberration, correct lens softness and do many, many interesting
things. They are not a complete solution for a photo-editing workflow but they
are a great first step before editing with Photoshop or something else. DxO
optics for example can create an image from a RAW file that is far better than
a default in-camera JPG.
5. To reduce noise
There are two big advantages about
shooting RAW in terms of noise. The first advantage is that you can expose to
the right maximizing the signal that the camera gets and thus improving the
signal to noise ratio. If you expose to the right you need to shoot RAW to be
able to fix the exposure of the shot to something you like. The second
advantage is that the RAW processor can apply a first instance of
noise-reduction to the RAW file with results that are not as destructive as a
noise reduction applied to a JPG. If you shoot frequently in twilight or at
night RAW is mandatory to improve your shots.
6. To improve prints
This is as simple as “real pixels
are better than software created pixels” when you shoot a photo as you will
probably need to do many things before printing. Leveling the shot a little,
cropping, changing colors to match the printer profile and of course
sharpening. If you do all these things over a JPG you will be editing and
modifying a file that is not intended for editing. JPGs are the final step in
any workflow, so if you start with a JPG you can’t do anything and we all know
that no photo is perfect for printing straight from the camera.
7. Why not?
I left another strong but simple
reason for the end. Unless you really need to shoot JPG because you need a
certain burst speed or you have a small memory card, there’s really no reason
against shooting RAW. You can even shoot RAW + JPG if you want and use the JPG
storing the RAW for the future. Shooting JPG is like using a polaroid camera,
you lose your negatives and what you get is the final representation of your
photo, it has little flexibility.
music+image
Thanks for visiting, please be sure that I read each and every one of your kind comments, I appreciate them all. Stay tuned.
