Roar!
I know that life is rarely as simple as black and white. According to the book I found under my mum's bed, there are at least 50 shades of grey. But let's put that to one side for now and for the purpose of this blog post, categorise photographers into two distinct groups: those who are happy just to take pictures really quite casually and accept the results as they come out of the camera, and those who prefer to 'craft' an image by dabbling with the photograph in post production (and that's 'post production' as in editing images in software such as Photoshop, not as in writing lots of letters to be delivered by the postman).
Neither of the above approaches is better than the other - the main thing is that you're happy with the output produced and enjoy the entire process. The problems start to occur when you're shooting the more simplified method, but then get frustrated that any editing you do afterwards just doesn't seem to work out the way you hoped.
One of the main reasons why editing pictures afterwards (or even the images straight out of the camera) sometimes produce less than satisfactory results, is because the image has been captured using JPEG processing, rather than in the file format that is known as RAW.
Imagine for a moment that the digital file produced by your camera is a block of marble and you want to transform that block into a beautiful sculpture. When you shoot JPEG, the processor within your digital camera does most of the sculpting for you. Big chunks of marble have been chiseled away, never to be recovered.
You may be able to tinker with it a little further by smoothing away some rough edges and even painting it a different colour, but the overall shape has largely been determined by the camera. You have lost a ton of control and marble - that is, the original information that the camera captured of the scene.
That's really bad luck if you were aiming for a well endowed sculpture, but the camera has chopped that delicate area into next week. His todger lies in pieces on the cutting room floor and there ain't nothing you can do about it.
On the other hand, when you elect to record your images as RAW files, what you're left with is essentially that entire block of marble - all of the information that your camera was able to capture at the time it processed the image. This means that with the help of software like Photoshop or Lightroom, you (and not the camera) can chisel away and end up producing an image that much better represents the scene you saw, or your interpretation of it.
Basically your sculpture will now stand there fully intact and turn ladies heads, making them blush.
Of course, shooting RAW does have some disadvantages. The file sizes will be much, much larger than what you would get if you let the camera process and compress the image into a JPEG file.
You're likely to be looking at RAW file sizes of 25MB to 40MB instead of around 4MB to 7MB for JPEG images. This is because you're recording all the information available, not just those bits that the camera has decided will create the best image. However, once you have produced the image you're happy with, you'll be able to compress it into a much smaller JPEG file that can easily be shared.
One of the most wonderful things about shooting RAW is, the information that you captured is always available to you. This 'master' file can never be altered (unless you choose to delete it of course). This means you can come back to it at a later date and process it all over again to produce output with an entirely different feel to the previous version. This is especially beneficial if in the meantime you've acquired new software or learned a new processing technique.
Obviously the larger file sizes do have implications for your memory card and computer hard drive. It will also affect how many images your camera can process in a burst - you may find that it has to take a little break to chill out and process what it's just seen, before it decides it is ready to play with you again.
But for me, quality wins over quantity every time. Limitations in photography can actually inspire far more creativity. Being forced to slow down and think about things generally results in better pictures than the scattergun approach of firing off a ton of shots and hoping that there will be some nuggets of gold hidden among the dross.
Another thing to consider is that not all cameras have RAW shooting functionality. But if you're serious about moving beyond snapshots to creating more satisfying images, you most likely already own a camera that can. Pretty much every DSLR or Compact System Camera on the market today will offer RAW support, as will the more sophisticated high end fixed lens compact cameras that many manufacturers are now offering. In fact, there are even some Android based camera phones that are being developed with RAW capture ability.
So if your camera offers the facility and you've not tried it before, give RAW a go today!
You'll have to do some work - in fact the images as they appear out the camera may initially seem disappointing as they won't have received the attention of your camera's JPEG processing engine to give them a gloss and shine. But your ability to, for example, recover details that would have once been lost in blown highlights or dark shadows will potentially astound you.
If you don't have access to Photoshop or Lightroom, you can always download the free GIMP software which offers some decent processing options, especially given its price. Another option is to take advantage of the free trials offered by pretty much all major software companies. Adobe will let you trial the full versions of Photoshop and Lightroom for 30 days entirely free - plenty of time to try RAW processing if you haven't done so before.
