Please explain RAW to me.

I am very new to photography. About a year ago I bought a Canon EOS Digital Rebel XT but never bothered to really learn how to use it. I kind of just took pictures but now I really want to learn how to use it correctly.

I have been trying to learn about RAW. You would please explain it to me.
Does you personally always shoot in RAW?

When you normally take a picture with your camera, your camera (after receiving the image on the sensor) converts the image to JPEG for storage on your memory card.

When you shoot the picture in RAW it records the "raw" data and does not compress it. This allows for much greater flexibility in post-processing as your dealing with a unaltered, uncompressed image.

When shooting RAW the image files are also bigger (I believe like 18MB per pic vs 6MB if shot at high settings with normal compression)

I believe the canon cameras may still alter RAW images a tad as well (not as unaltered as say a RED scarlet will shoot), but as aforementioned RAW is much easier to post-process...

that make sense?

basically it's a file containing unprocessed data from sensor. it's not an image file. you need software to read this file and turn it into an image

i shoot only raw.
go home pick shots i like and process, and save as jpeg.

http://www.adobe.com …ing_digitalrawc​apture.pdf

If you shoot in jpeg, your camera takes a photo in Raw and then decides how to make the best jpeg it can imagine.
In making the jpeg it throws out a bunch of the information in the raw photo and saves only the jpeg.
So the camera's decisions are fairly final.
If you shoot raw the camera saves all the raw data.
Later you make the decisions regarding how to make the final image: hue, tint, saturation, sharpness, contrast etc in the raw converter and photoshop.
As long as you save the raw you can remake these decisions if you ever change your mind.

BTW, that essay on the adobe site is great.
Thanks for the link, Ed.

Apart from the above, what got me to shooting to RAW is higher dynamic range, sharpness and clarity (uncompressed).

DB4L90 wrote in post #8282221
I am very new to photography. About a year ago I bought a Canon EOS Digital Rebel XT but never bothered to really learn how to use it. I kind of just took pictures but now I really want to learn how to use it correctly.

I have been trying to learn about RAW. You would please explain it to me.
Does you personally always shoot in RAW?

Try looking here

mista_chewey wrote in post #8282274
basically it's a file containing unprocessed data from sensor. it's not an image file. you need software to read this file and turn it into an image

i shoot only raw.
go home pick shots i like and process, and save as jpeg.

The only thing I do that is different is that I save the processed image as a TIFF file, hate to do all the processing and then lose a lot of the information when it is compressed to a j-peg.

First off, your camera ONLY shoots RAW. When you select JPG, the camera takes the RAW data and pipes it into it's on-board JPG processor to generate the JPG "image" to save to the card.

When you shoot RAW, the RAW "data" goes directly to the card and is not an image.

To generate an image, you use a RAW processor (software on your PC) which turns the data into a viewable image, much like the camera's JPG processor. The difference is that YOU have complete control over the image generation process. You can change the white balance, adjust the contrast/brightness/bl​ack point/etc....

So you can leave these decisions up to the camera's little processor (and hope it makes the right decisions since they are irreversible), or save the decisions for later where YOU have complete control over it.

On my XT, the RAW files ranged from about 7mb to 10mb for most images, still very managable (my 50D RAW files average about 21mb).

You can post process JPG files, but to do so you are uncompressing a compresed 8-bit file and then when you export or save to jpg recompressing to 8-bit.

The RAW file you are editing a 12 bit (on the rebel XT) uncompressed file and then when you export to JPG you are compressing to an 8-bit file.

The RAW is going to have more potential in the second scenario ot have more information and detail than editing a jpg.

After getting Apple's Aperture, I soon discovered that in my opinion, all my photos needed post processing (well not so much needed as could be improved with).

You have some good feedback above. The best complete easy to understand explanation I found is the link below which I found posted on this forum earlier (cannot remember who posted it). It also helps understand what you have to do a raw file in post processing.


http://www.ronbigelow.​com/articles/raw/raw.h​tm