Somewhere on your photography journey, you have heard the advice: shoot in raw. You may be wondering, will shooting raw make your photos better? In this article, we will explore what raw photography is. We will also give you eight reasons why you should be shooting in it.
What Is A RAW File?
Raw is a generic term that refers to an uncompressed unprocessed file format. This is the file created by your camera that includes the most information it is capable of collecting from a scene. This information includes the range of light, the light’s temperature, and the variety of colours.
Most mid-to-high end cameras give you the choice of shooting in raw or JPEG format. You switch to shooting raw in your camera’s menu system. Each company has a specific raw file format. Sony cameras create ARW files. Nikon uses an NEF file format. Canon creates either CR2 or CR3 files. DNG is a universal raw image format created by Adobe. It is used by many devices including some smartphone apps like Lightroom mobile.
Open raw files using post-processing software like Lightroom or Capture One. As files are unfinished, they need to be processed before they are ready to share.
Why You Should Shoot RAW Photos
Capture The Most Detail
Raw files capture and save the most detail. There is no sense in buying a camera with a lot of megapixels just to throw them away.
With my Sony A7R3, a raw file is about 85MB. The best JPEG file my camera can produce is around 16MB. The JPEG file is about 1/5th the size of the raw file. The files are not the same. A lot of information was lost when my camera compressed the JPEG file. If you are worried about storage space, then shoot in JPEG. But most of us want our cameras to take the best image possible.
Raw image files will be larger than JPEG because of all the detail collected. This is a good thing. You get to decide which details stay and which are unimportant. Storage is inexpensive. You may need to buy larger SD cards or an external hard drive to hold your raw images. But with each image, you are saving more information.
Better Brightness Adjustments
Each generation of digital cameras seems to increase dynamic range. Dynamic range is the ability to capture gradations in light from the darkest shadows to the brightest highlights.
JPEGs are smaller because they throw out some of the collected information. Your camera may be collecting thousands of levels of brightness throughout a scene. But the JPEG is limited. The raw image has much more information in the shadows and the highlights than a JPEG. You can use this information when post-processing the photo to bring out detail in the shadows or the highlights.
You have much more flexibility when it comes to adjusting an over-or underexposed image. In this image, my camera metered for the sun. This made the skyline a silhouette. It looks like there is no detail in the buildings at all. Because I shot in raw, I can bring out a lot of detail in the buildings. I can decide how to balance the light from the sunrise and the skyline.
Better White Balance Adjustments
The ability to adjust white balance is one of the main reasons that photographers shoot raw photos. White balance is the temperature of the light. Light falls on a scale between cool with a bluish tint to warm with a yellow one. We can set our cameras to record the temperature of the light in a scene. But this can be tricky if there is a mix of light sources or the light is changing.
It is much easier to set your camera on auto white balance and fix the temperature in post-processing. Raw files let you adjust the light temperature. You can match what you remember about the scene or create a mood. A JPEG uses the white balance selected by your camera.
Wild horses with three white balance raw photos comparisons
Create A Personal Style
Most professional photography is shot in raw. This format gives the most flexibility when editing photos later. Professional photojournalists and sports photographers may shoot in JPEG when they send images directly from their camera to a news outlet. They do not have time to post-process the pictures.
But post-processing is central to digital photography. The style and look you get when post-processing your images are unique to you. Letting your camera make post-processing decisions means that your photography will end up looking like everyone else’s.
More Colours To Work With
JPEG files save 256 shades of colour. This seems like a lot until you know that raw files collect more than 65,000 shades of colour. A JPEG takes all the colours in the scene and reduces them down to just a few hundred. This is one reason a JPEG is smaller than a raw image. But you cannot get these colours back. They are gone for good.
With JPEG images, you may see banding. Banding is where colour gradation is not smooth. Colours jump suddenly from a darker to a lighter shade. This means that there are missing colours in between the shades.
Non-Destructive Photo Editing
Raw photos are meant to be post-processed. Programs like Lightroom keep you from changing a file permanently. But in other programs, changes saved to a JPEG file become permanent. Unless you specifically save the JPEG under another name, your changes are baked into the file. This includes cropping. The information that you cropped out is gone for good. If you make the photo dark and save it, it will be impossible to restore detail in the shadows.
Raw files are never permanently changed by the post-processing program. The original file is always there. You can go back to the original file and start again.
More Resizing Options
You can make a photo smaller. But it is much more difficult to resize an image to make it larger. Raw photos start larger than JPEGs. You have a lot of options when exporting the file. You can make it small enough to post on social media or large enough to print on a billboard. You can save a raw file as a JPEG, a PNG, or a TIFF. These files can be widely shared.
Print Better Quality Images
Printing will show errors or artefacts in your image that might not be so apparent on a screen. For instance, you might see noise in the shadows or banding. Raw files let you save larger images. This gives you the option to print larger.
JPEGs are locked into a colour space. Colour space is how colours are created by combining red, green, and blue. The most popular colour space for screens is sRGB. But CMYK is a larger colour space and is better for printing. This topic is too complicated for this article. But if you shoot in raw, you have the option of switching between colour spaces.
Conclusion
When deciding on raw vs JPEG, you should know there are some disadvantages to raw files. The file sizes are large, and at some point in your photography career, storage becomes an issue. You also must post-process the images and save them in a format you can share.
Don’t spend money on an expensive camera and hours learning how to post-process images only to throw away important data. Raw records all the information your camera’s sensor is capable of. Whether you use the image data is up to you, but you have it. And you will always have it. If a new post-processing program comes out in the future that cleans noise from your high ISO images, you can use it on your raw photos. There is no sense in buying expensive gear if your photos will be the same as everyone else’s.
originally posted on expertphotography.com by Jenn Mishra
About Author: Jenn Mishra is a fine art travel and landscape photographer based in the St. Louis metro area. Jenn is an active photographic educator and has been invited to speak at conferences such as Out of Chicago. Her photos have been featured in a number of solo exhibitions. Her studio is Wits End Photography.
