Many are times that you have heard photographers say how shooting raw is the best thing to do. You probably don’t understand why this is so important to so many people. What does it mean for your final images? What difference will it make? The following is a brief description of why you should shoot Raw.
-
High Quality
For starters, if you want to maintain all the data of your images that are recorded by the sensor, you want to go Raw. Unlike other compressed file formats, no information is lost. In turn, the resultant images are better quality. Here, you are able to process your own images the way you like them. The results are always better.
-
Brightness
When you shot Raw, you have much greater brightness levels. The more the levels, the smoother the tone transition. In turn, you can make more adjustments without losing the original quality of the photo. Raw also allows you to correct ‘posterization’ or avoid it altogether.
At times, you will obviously overexpose or underexpose your images. When this is done, you can easily correct the image because of the additional information you have in the file. As a result, your photos will look better and have higher quality.
-
White Balance Easily Adjustable
With Raw shots, everything including the white balance is recorded in the image. This makes it quite easy to adjust making your photo clearer. In conjunction with great color, your photos will be so much better than if the camera automatically adjusted the white balance.
-
More Detail
Shooting Raw gives you the opportunity to include more features in your images. You can easily sharpen your images and also reduce the noise substantially. The programs that you choose to edit your files on are innumerable and you can choose one that has as many features as you like to make your photos improve even better.
-
Non-destructive Editing
With Raw files, there is no way you can completely ruin the original file. In fact, when you make changes to your image, the changes are recorded as additional data and not replacing the old data. If you don’t like what you see, you can easily reset to the original image and start your editing work all over again.
Conclusion
If you want to get better quality images and maintain the quality throughout the image’s lifespan, you want to shoot Raw. This ensures that you have all the details of the shots you make and the quality remains intact.