As a photographer, you’ve probably been required several times to shoot in RAW. Why is it so important and what it really means for your imaging?
Let’s clear this out! Here are for you, the 5 major reasons why you should be shooting in raw:
OPTIMUM QUALITY LEVEL.
Quality level remains one of the major reason why a photographer needs to shoot in RAW. While shooting in RAW you record all data captured by the sensor. This gives the highest quality files.
When it comes to your awesome images, you do want high quality!
In contrast, when you shoot in JPEG format, the camera does its own processing to convert the RAW information into a JPEG. However, your camera is nowhere near as smart as your brain, nor is it as powerful as your computer, nor would it interpret or project the image the way you perceive it.
When you shoot RAW, you’re able to do that processing yourself. You decide how the image should look, projecting your own vision and direction to produce way better results.
RECORD HIGHER LEVEL OF BRIGHTNESS.
What does it mean? Levels of brightness refer to the number of steps from black to white in an image. Shooting in RAW allows you to have more levels of brightness, thus allowing for smoother and better transitions of tones.
The impact this has on your images is major. RAW shots allow you to make more adjustments (exposure, blacks, fill light, recovery, contrast, brightness) to your image with almost no reduction of quality.
OVER/UNDER EXPOSED IMAGEs ARE EASILY CORRECTED.
It is obvious that you want to get the best exposure in camera, but sometimes things move fast and you end up with a dramatically over or under exposed image.
With RAW you have additional information in the file, so it’s much easier to correct the image without a drastic reduction in quality. You can also recover more blown highlights and clipped shadows. Good stuff!
WHITE BALANCE ARE SMOOTHLY CORRECTED.
When shooting in JPEG the white balance is applied to the image. You can’t just easily choose another option. With RAW the white balance is still recorded, but because you have way more data, it’s easy to adjust.
Great white balance and colour are essential to an awesome image, and shooting RAW lets you make the adjustments easier and faster, with better results.
MORE VISUAL DETAILS.
When you shoot RAW you have access to sharpening and noise algorithms in program like Lightroom that are way more powerful than those found in your camera. Plus, these sharpening and noise algorithms are always improving, so in the future you’ll be able to re-visit your RAW files and take advantage of these improvements.
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Are you still willing to shoot in JPEG?
