From a building in downtown Loogootee, Mother Nature creating a cascade of ice. This is my one of my first photos shot in RAW format and right now I don't know what to think. Did read from another novice photographer the following:
I asked here about the difference between Raw and JPG. Basically it's like comparing the most expensive blue cheese with cheesewiz... The jpeg condenses the info of the photo and loses some of it. The quality is therefore diminished. So, ok, I started to shoot in RAW. It takes more place on my memory chip but it's worth it.
Hmm, sounds like something to look into, right?
4 comments:
Raw format simply allows you to do processing in Photoshop or other photo software while jpg has already been processed by the camera settings. Think of Raw as the negative and jpeg as the printed photo.
Mmm... there's a bit more to it than that. JPEG is not actually a file format, but a compression algorithm. In photos with large areas of one color, a jpeg file will delete the redundant pixels while storing the information to recreate them when the photo is rendered by some kind of program that can translate it (editing program, web browser, what have you). Which is fine, if the pixels it's stripping out are exactly the same color. But in order to make the files as slim as possible, the algorithm uses a threshold value and any pixel within that range that is adjacent to another pixel within that range is deleted and rendered based on the mean value. In fact, both pixels are lost even though they are on opposite ends of the range. The higher resolution JPEG files have a narrower range for compression resulting in truer images, but proportionally larger files. RAW files are not compressed at all -- what you see is what you get.
The other significant difference is that RAW will store more data per pixel (though I forget just this second how many bits each uses). The result is better color depth, better contrast and the metadata to adjust things like white balance after the shot is taken (you can't do that with JPEG, though you can make a passable approximation of it).
The downsides of RAW? Besides the substantially larger file size, you can process JPEG files in Photoshop or any other editing program, but you may not be able to process RAW files without first converting them to another format. RAW is the "native" format of the camera, and may or may not be recognized by your editing software (depending on what -- and how old -- your editing software is). The software that comes with your camera should give you the ability to convert from RAW to JPEG at a minimum though. And because of the substantially larger file size, your high speed shooting capability is limited. My Canon 30D will shoot 5fps for several seconds continuously before it fills the buffer to a point where it has to wait until some of the data has been written to the CF card before it can take another shot. But shooting in RAW, I can only shoot 3fps and only in much shorter bursts. Some of this can be overcome with high speed CF cards (the Generation III cards are currently the fastest ones available) since those can handle a faster data transfer. But like any other data processing system, I/O is the slowest link in the chain.
So the analogy of RAW as a negative (or slide) and JPEG as a print holds up... to a point. But even though it doesn't have the same latitude as RAW, JPEG is still more flexible than a finished print.
By the way... in the process of my dissertation I forgot to tell you I love the shot! Very unique, and well captured -- whatever the format!
You can learn a lot by reading blogs.
Have a nice day !
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