WHY YOU SHOOT RAW.


Digital photogeekage. Not for people who would rather read about unicorns and romance.


First of all... some of you are asking.. what is RAW? In a nutshell, RAW is the information the digital camera gets, before it compresses it (throws away info) to give you a jpeg, which you can view on your computer. You cannot view a RAW file without a RAW converter. In very simplified terms, a RAW file has been described as a digital negative.

OK, so here's why you shoot RAW. Besides things like being able to set white balance later, the biggest reason that I shoot RAW all the time is contrast latitude. There is at least 2 stops more info in a RAW file, which allows you to do things like rescue overblown highlights and shadow detail. To illustrate: The above shot is one that was exposed incorrectly. The wireless flash didn't fire and so all I got was what you see. I cranked up the brightness to show you that there is no shadow detail in the jpeg. None. So everything that's black in the picture is just pure black. Also there was very little detail in the computer monitors. So the brightest things in the picture have no details and the darkest things in the picture have no details. If I only had the jpeg and I needed this shot, I'd be out of luck. Fortunately, I shoot JPEG + RAW so out of curiousity I pulled up the RAW file in Bibble to see what I could retrieve from the improperly exposed file. Now granted I got carried away tweaking it and the lights on the board don't actually streak like that without photoshop... but look at the detail I was able to pull out of the RAW file... not only do we have more computer monitor detail (highlights).. but now I can see darth vader lurking in the shadows... We recently calibrated our monitors with a spyder2, so if we did it right you should see darth vader too.. but if not.. well I might have to do it again...


so anyways... I shoot small jpeg + RAW which is how I ended up with a jpeg and a RAW of this same file. I do that because the jpegs are quick to preview/edit and when I really want to tweak a file, I have the option. It does take up a lot of space, but as I get better and better at RAW conversion, I'm glad I have the RAW's archived and I wish I'd done this from the very beginning. So if you have the option to shoot RAW, I'd advise that you do it from now on, even if you are getting good jpegs out of the camera. Only downside of RAW is that it's a very large file compared to a jpeg and thus takes more space to store and longer write speeds, so unless of course you need either the space or speed of plain old jpegs, shoot RAW. but hey, um don't take my word for it... get out there and shoot.


In an effort to provide some small entertainment tidbit for the non photo people who read this, I have this to confess:

I had no idea it was espresso. I thought the word was "expresso". Thanks Caitlin for being the one who had the guts to tell me, since I've been saying it wrong all my life. Melissa worked at starbucks and I even read Pour Your Heart Into It. and still got it wrong.

Throw me a frickin bone here people... need the info...;)

Posted: Thu - July 20, 2006 at 12:29 AM          

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