Raw Benefits?

Simple topic. Why is Raw so grand?


~~~~~~~~~LEARNING IN PROGRESS~~~~~~~~~

When you take shot using the .jpg setting your camera takes a raw shot first, capturing all the data from the sensor. Your camera then, using your picture style settings, converts it to a .jpg and stores it on the card and discards the extra data. If you shoot it in raw you get to decide after the fact whether your picture style settings were the correct ones. You get more lattitude for things like saturation, sharpness, white balance, and if you miss exposure more lattitude to fix a blown shot. Basically you make decisions that you would otherwise leave up to your camera, and you dont have to make those decisions before you ever take the shot.

Read this and all will be revealed:
http://www.ronbigelow.​com/articles/raw/raw.h​tm

Upsides:
Fix white balance
More data from image stored
Better able to recover improperly exposed shots
More flexibility to try different settings (sharpening, more control of color, etc)

Supposed Downsides:
Files are bigger - storage is cheap
Some argues RAW takes more time, this is simply not true. I could take 1000 raw shots and batch them in DPP to JPG in no time

If you're not shooting raw I think you're missing out.

This subject has been debated/discussed here and elsewhere since the inception of the RAW format. It certainly has its benefits. I know there are some that will shoot this no matter what they are shooting, a habit that I don't subscribe to.

It really depends on what you are trying to accomplish, where its use is intended. If you are planning on doing some heavy post processing on it then I would suggest that it is a good idea. If you are just beginning to shoot it is an ok plan to shoot RAW as it does give you the option of recovering shots that didn't come out as planned. The one thing that does happen is that too many people use this format as a crutch. How many times I have heard "Oh, I shot RAW so I will just fix it later". I shoot alot of images in JPG. If you can make sure that you nail your exposure then JPG will serve you just fine. It is really a personal decision that you learn to make over time. If I know that I am shooting a subject and that I am going to be printing large then I would lean towards RAW.

Not that it matters at the price of storage these days but the files are larger and you have to learn how to convert them properly. As I said, it i a personal choice but imo, it should never be used as a crutch to shooting correctly in the first place.

Using the Film to Digital analogy, think of a RAW file as the original negative (or positive if you wish) image. You can process and re-process the original image while keeping the original intact. With a JPEG image, your stuck with what comes out of the camera. You can post process a JPEG but your starting out with an image that has already been processed/compressed and pixels thrown away.

I shoot RAW 100% of the time for that very reason although as the above poster mentioned, many use it as a crutch and fix everything in post. There are no shortcuts to making a great image.

You need to do research, then come to your own conclusion as to whether Raw is best for you.

Here's the FAQ for Raw from the FAQ sticky at the top of the page:

https://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthre​ad.php?t=80337