RAW for dummies

[LowTechMan]

Hi,

I see alot posted here about shooting in RAW format. I'm assuming the quality of the finished product is better but don't understand much about the differences. What are the advantages/disadvantages. How hard is it to learn to use. I don't have much in the way of photo software thus I don't much with photo editing, pretty much use them straight out of the camera. I always leave my cameras set on maximum everything because I have plenty of memory and I like to print out pictures for albums on a regular basis. I use an S40, S50 and an S70. I have been approached once for use of my photos for commercial use. Comments anyone?

Thanks,
Doug

[Divyak]

RAW format allows the greatest flexability. I'm a Nikon D1x Shooter (But still love this forum), so speaking from that aspect which I assume is the same for Canon.

In RAW mode you can change the white balance, even after you took the shot as well as make your exposure compensation adjustments after the fact. If you shoot in JPEG mode, you will be unable to do this other than a bit of tweaking in PS. The nice thing is you don't get any artifacts and degradation of the image when you edit as opposed to JPEG as JPEG images will degrade with each edit.

The disadvantage? Lots of disk space is required, but if you are shooting a real job such as a wedding or commercial job, it's the only way to go.

Hope this helps,

Terry Divyak
http://www.terrydivyak.com

[Steven M. Anthony]

RAW format is great as long as you have the softwaer to take advantage of it. Many manipulations you can do in a raw converter like Adobe Camera Raw can be done, as Terry said, without degrading your image. While the degrigation of the file when manipulating in in photoshop or paintshop pro is small, each step degrades the image a little bit more--so whatever you can do in the raw converter puts you that much ahead.

Shooting Raw helps overcome mistakes, too. Sometimes you can recover what appear to be blown-out highlights, and you can adjust the white balance as well. If you shoot in jpeg and get the white balance wrong, it can be hard to correct without ruining the image...

Check out the book Real World Camera Raw by Bruce Fraser. He gives several great reasons to shoot RAW.