Do you need to shoot in RAW format? That’s the question I want to ask today. Before we try to answer the question. let’s see what are the benefits of working with RAW format.
- Give you the ability of working with uncompressed files; contains all information from your sensor.
- More control in adjusting white balance, shadow/highlights, contrast, brightness, noise etc. due to the 12 bit information within the RAW file
- Useful in extreme conditions. Low/High contrast or low light scenes.
- Better image quality if you are competent in your photoshop skills
Now, you read all these and say, “Great, from now on, I will always shoot in RAW format.” Well, you could do that if you fulfill (at least for me) these 3 conditions.
- Disk space - Not a major problems nowadays. The gigabytes per dollar ratio is dropping rapidly; affordable terabytes are coming in the next 2 years. But how much is too much? A typical RAW file is about 8 meg. Add to that, your converted tiff, psd and jpeg file, you will fill up your hard disk in super quick time. I find that I need to buy a new external hard disk every 6 months.
- Time - Post processing takes time. If you have an inefficient workflow, you will take even more time. The thing about RAW is that you can’t batch process them as that would eliminate the advantages of the RAW process.
- Post processing skills (PP) - To me this is the most important factor. Without good PP skills and experience to see a good photograph, no matter how you shift the scroll bar in your adjustment, you will not get a better photograph than your DSLR can automatically give you.
Now that I have lay out the case for you. Do you want to answer the question yourself?
Do you need to shoot in RAW format?