shooting in RAW format?

Question

Anyone care to explain a bit about it? Does it give you better quality photos? I have been shooting in large jpg and the camera I use is a nikon d-100.

Answer 1

There are many reasons for shooting in RAW format.
Recording in RAW allows you to adjust the white balance, colour balance, saturation, sharpness etc after the image is taken using software that probably came with your camera. The image qaulity is lossless. If you are in to taking images then producing decent images from something like photoshop RAW is a must as you can make mutiple conversions from one image, ie darken the sky in one then save it, go back to the original image then darken lighten the foreground and adjust the colour balence then you can combine the two images with a final image that is amazing rather than having a dodgy converrsion made up from a highly compressed jpeg.
I shoot in jpeg normally, kids birthdays, christmas etc but when i go out specifically to take some good images of landscapes or architecture i shoot in RAW. Its benefits far more outweigh the time spent at the PC afterwards.

With reference to another comment the reason wedding photographers shoot in jpgf is that they take many images and it would be more time consuming to convert for example 500 images rather than use them straight away.

Answer 2

the answer is yes or no, depending on the particular RAW converter that you use. I've found that with Rawshooter Essentials I can get a noticeably higher resolution photo than with my camera's JPEG. At least with my Minolta A2. You may or may not see this improvement for your D100. Post that question over on the Nikon DSLR forums at dpreview.com, and the experts there will quickly answer your question.

However- normally- JPEG images- at the highest level, shouldn't lose any resolution. What they do is compress the colors. The camera can store a lot more color information than your eye can sense- so, as long as you don't intend to do any post processing- JPEG images should look just as good.

RAW files are a lossless (ie no loss) compression file so that you can extract everything that the sensor saw, before your camera did things like white balance adjustment, sharpening, and compressing each color into 8 bits (256 levels). So- if you tend to play with your images after your download them in photoshop, you really may benefit from taking RAW. the downside is that it add time to your image workflow, and the files are much larger.

Answer 3

There are two advantages to RAW. The first is that it gives you a tiny bit more resolution because compressing an image to JPEG as you take the picture loses a tiny bit of fidelity. This is absolutely not an issue unless you plan to blow something up to poster size.

The main reason to use RAW is that things like white balance, sharpness and color conversion are implemented as the image is converted into a JPEG. Most cameras have limited settings for these while a computer program used on a RAW image later on has far greater versatility.

Answer 4

How serious of a photographer are you? If you are serious enough about a given photo to be using a tripod, I'd use RAW; otherwise probably not.

I think one of the big issues is that Photoshop now includes direct RAW import for the better & more popular cameras. So if you import RAW & edit & save in losses TIFF or native Photoshop format, then you will have maximum quality.

The problem occurs when you shoot JPEG, edit & save JPEG, re-edit & save JPEG, etc. Then you are getting a little extra degradation of the photo everytime you save it. After 4 saves, it can get pretty bad.

Answer 5

This question popped up just last week. My answer then & now is this:
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The benefits of using RAW are marginal. The difference is so small that even a lot of professional wedding photographers shoot exclusively in jpg.
The two occasions where you want the extra information in RAW files are:
* when you shoot under tricky lighting conditions, where you might screw up the exposure. A RAW file is easyer to salvage. (If possible, bracket and use the histogram, too.)
* when you want poster size prints.
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For the 6 other responses, here's the old question: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AhgePOa_YZf_obaD7dX..gTsy6IX?qid=20060826175427AAOLggz

Answer 6

Raw is what the pros use because it is not lossy compression. JPEG is lossy compression and the quality degrades after each save. Shoot Raw, upload, convert and print/distribute as JPEG.