Should I Shoot RAW?

I guess we'd better start of with the "What is RAW?" stuff. All photographs from digital cameras start life as a RAW image. The shutter opens and light begins to flow through the lens, is focused on the sensor, and begins filling up the pixels with photons. When the shutter closes the data collection is complete; each of the pixels contains a number of photons corresponding to the brightness of the light that struck it. Now the camera counts the number of photons in each pixel and creates an electronic version of the image. At this point in time the image is monochromatic, it has no color. Your camera's sensor cannot see color, it only sees brightness. If your camera is set to store the image in RAW form this is the image that is stored. The RAW image however, cannot be displayed; the image on the back of the camera is a full color image and it looks pretty much like a print of the photo might look. The RAW image would be very dark and have no color.  The camera processes the RAW data, interprets the color, brightens the image, sharpens it, and creates a JPEG version, and that is the image that is displayed on your LCD. If you choose to shoot JPEG images this the image that is stored on your memory card. Some cameras will allow you to save both the RAW and the JPEG images and give you the best of both worlds.

This tells you a little about what RAW is, but nothing about whether you should use it. I'll tell you up front that I only shoot RAW so you might consider me a biased judge. Those who are against it usually argue that it's only benefit is to save you when you take a bad photo. It can do that. Much more information is saved with the RAW image and if you've under exposed or over exposed you can adjust it quite a bit more that you can adjust a JPEG photo. White balance of a RAW shot is set in your computer, not in your camera and can therefore be adjusted any amount in any direction. Since more data are collected changes in contrast, vibrance, saturation, and sharpness have a much larger range of adjustment than a jpeg image. Pseudo HDR shots can be created by processing two or three versions of the photo and merging them back into one image.

Why shoot JPEG? These shots are processed in the camera they come out as much smaller files so that your memory card can store two or three times the number of images as RAW shots. Also, as they come out of the camera processed, you can go to a local drug store and print them directly from the memory card. You can email them also from the card. If they are correctly exposed and white balanced they come from the camera pre-cooked and ready to eat. The reason that the files are so much smaller is that the camera uses what is called "lossy compression" the camera looks at a batch of pixels and if it determines that they are very close to the same color and brightness it saves one and throws the others away. Most cameras offer three levels of JPEG compression they are labeled by quality and the most honest labeling is Low, Medium, High. Some may call them Normal, High, and Super High, or some other combination but they all mean the same thing. The lowest one throws away many more pixels than the highest and leaves you with fewer pixels to adjust with later.

Enlarge a JPEG image and look in large evenly colored areas like a cloudless sky. If you see rectangular areas you are seeing JPEG compression artifacts and you need to choose a higher setting next time. You can't fix it now. Again, a well exposed, correctly white balanced photo saved as a JPEG image is excellent. Many pro's shoot them to speed up the time from shoot to delivery. They depend on their cameras and their ability to deliver a high percentage of usable shots. Your camera in automatic mode will also deliver a high percentage (not as high as that pro I referred to) of usable (and here you may not be as picky as the pro's clients) photos. You don't have to shoot RAW to get great photos, but there are some advantages.