Mastering Your DSLR Part 7 - Shooting RAW

Your DSLR provides you with a number of modes with which to set the recording quality of your photos and most of these modes record the image in the widely used JPEG (or JPG) format. Most DSLRs also provide you with the opportunity to record the image in RAW which will require you to subsequently process it with some software on your computer. So what is RAW and how does it differ from JPEG? A raw image contains minimally processed data from an image sensor within your DSLR. The name comes from the fact that these files have not been processed - i.e. they are raw. Some people refer to them as digital negatives as they fulfill a similar role to that of negatives in film photography - i.e. the negative is not usable as an image but it contains all of the information required to create an image. JPEG however is the result of the processing carried out within the camera on the raw data captured by the sensor during the act of shooting a scene. This processing is based on a number of predetermined camera settings such as white balance, contrast, color grading and sharpness that are either determined automatically by the camera or selected by the photographer. Once the data is processed, the raw image is deleted as it is no longer required. However, most DSLRs do provide the opportunity to select a recording quality mode that retains the raw image as well as processing a copy of it to provide a JPEG image as well - i.e. you obtain a raw file and a JPEG file. An inherent problem with in-camera processing is that . . . (to read the remainder of this article, please log in below.)