RAW comparison by bentchick

Photography • Work In Progress • posted on Feb 15, 2011

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Description

I had several people ask about RAW files. Was it worth taking shots in RAW. The answer is "YES". Here is my example: The day I was in this canyon shooting fall colors was not the best day to shoot. Overcast skies made colors look dull and not vibrant. Normally I probably would have discarded many of the photos I took that day as being unacceptable. As you can see this photo is not that great to begin with, but in RAW mode you have the ability to lighten shadowed areas, darken highlight areas, adjust white balance (if the camera setting was wrong for conditions), sharpen, adjust color saturation, and much much more. This is not intended as a tutorial, but just an example of use of RAW mode. If you haven't tried it yet and your camera is capable of shooting in RAW, just do a few test shots and play with them. There are lots of great tutorials out there, but the main thing is to play with your photo and learn how the adjustments affect your photo. Many times I start playing with the sliders and come up with something really cool, something I didn't even think would make the picture look better. So when it comes to RAW... take the time to play and have fun with it. You may get frustrated with it the first couple times, but keep at it. Try a different photo, you will get hooked on the process soon enough! Thanks for taking the time to view and hopefully read up on this excellent tool for photography!

Comments (11)

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bentchick

4:55PM | Tue, 15 February 2011

Oh Yeah! Please click on the picture to see the larger version, you'll get a much better idea of what I'm talking about! Thanks

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MrGorf

4:59PM | Tue, 15 February 2011

It's definitely an improvement. It looks a lot sharper with its improved mid-tone contrast. Another good time to use the RAW mode might be when the scene's overall contrast is too high. Sounds good for all sorts of occasions! Thanks for the side-by-side comparison, it illustrates your point quite well.

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Chipka

5:42PM | Tue, 15 February 2011

I definitely make it a rule to play with camera settings as much as possible, and to tweak photos as much as fun allows, and so I totally agree with your encouragement to play around with RAW camera settings and such. As for the shots themselves, the details that you can bring out are quite startling, and I love the overall composition of both shots...well...the original shot and it's tweaked twin; I love it when I see something like this and it inspires me to go out and do stuff. Well done! And yeah, this is a perfect illustration of your point.

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tracker234

10:49PM | Tue, 15 February 2011

Very well done, thanks for the info!

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bmac62

12:04AM | Wed, 16 February 2011

You always inspire me to shoot RAW...I think about it and then get a bit aggravated that Adobe's CS4 doesn't recognize my Olympus E-30 bought in May 2009...CS5 does but I haven't sprung for that update yet. But your comparison makes your point perfectly. One of these days:)

MrsLubner

1:14AM | Wed, 16 February 2011

I love the comparison. It certainly makes a big difference!

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Katraz

2:24AM | Wed, 16 February 2011

Nice comparison you are talking to the converted, I shoot RAW all the time this gives me the chance to work on it before converting to JPG or TIF then you can work on It more in Photoshop or whatever you use.

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