The virtues of shooting RAW

If your camera can shoot RAW I suggest you use it. I know that many of you DSLR shooters only capture JPG images and I know because I have one that shooting in RAW on point and shoot cameras is slow and many times prohibitively slow but when you can use this feature. Why? Because your camera has software in it that processes the RAW data into an image and then tosses all that information away!! Many times your camera will give you great JPG images especially when shooting conditions are ideal and you know how to use your camera. Sometimes even though you know your camera inside and out poor shooting conditions can “fool” the JPG engine of your camera to give poor results. If you have captured the data in RAW you can go in and compensate for difficult conditions and create your own JPG from the data your camera captured. Every now and again you run into an image that really dramatizes this point. The first image in the “Topsham Fair” post was one of those images for me. As I looked at the JPG (I capture both) I was thinking I blew it but I liked the shot so I tried the RAW file. Here are both JPG’s

This is what the camera made from the RAW data. It could be improved with post processing but it would be harder to do

With a few tweaks with a RAW conversion program I got this ...

It still needs work as I look at it again but you get my point you have way more control doing it yourself. Shooting in RAW does have its drawbacks like speed and storage space but you never know when you will take that picture and when you do you will be glad you have a RAW file. Feel free to leave your point of view in the comment section below.