Importance of shooting RAW

by Lye Tuck-Po

This is something that I tell students in my class on visual ethnography: shooting RAW vs shooting jpegs.

"A RAW file is lossless, meaning it captures uncompressed data from your camera sensor. Sometimes referred to as a digital negative, you can think of a RAW file as the raw “ingredients” of a photo that will need to be processed in order to bring out the picture’s full potential. As you might expect, the tradeoff for these detailed files is that RAW files are quite a bit larger than JPEG files. Still, most professional photographers shoot in RAW because it gives them more information to work with in the post-processing phase" (RAW vs. JPEG: Which format should you shoot in?)

I usually shoot both RAW and jpeg. Showing is better than talking, so:

The original jpeg: I forgot to change exposure and white balance settings. Batek boys making toys, 2010

Post processing reveals details that were captured by the camera but that would have been lost if I had shot in jpeg only

ANOTHER EXAMPLE:

Shooting into the sun with flash

Post processing adds depth & definition