Why RAW?

divamum

(Please forgive if this is addressed elsewhere - I did do a search, but couldn't find anything obvious among the hits returned. If there's a tutorial or article somewhere by all means point me to it!)

In any case: What are the specific advantages or RAW over high rez jpg? I'm not entirely clear on how/why one would need it, and just trying to figure out if I should get used to dealing with bigger files (new hard drive, here I come, obviously).

I'm trying to get more familiar with/sophisticated about/better at post editing on the computer, and thus figure I should know more about what's available to me! I shoot on a Rebel XT if that's any kind of factor in my choices - just a keen amateur taking pictures of family and anything that catches my fancy, but I have captured enough that I think are "keepers" (and printable, frameable keepers at that) that I'm trying to learn more.


Thanks in advance

Andy

did you try

raw benefits in the google custom search box?
You get this:

http://www.google.com/cse?q=raw+benefits&sa=Search&cx=015490029931808806336%3Awyeua6yybvs

divamum

Brilliant! Just what I needed (and that is one of the few search strings I didn't come up with - problem is with a common word like "raw" it's tough to narrow it to the hits you need!)

THANKS!

Andy wrote:

did you try

raw benefits in the google custom search box?
You get this:

http://www.google.com/cse?q=raw+benefits&sa=Search&cx=015490029931808806336%3Awyeua6yybvs

Scott_Quier

Here's a DGrin thread that might be useful. I'm particularly happy with post 42 in that thread

divamum

Scott_Quier wrote:

Here's a DGrin thread that might be useful. I'm particularly happy with post 42 in that thread

THANKS - that thread is great!

Btw, I still haven't figured out why my own on-site searches didn't pull any of this up - I did get hits, but many (most) seemed to be posts about something else containing the word "RAW" rather than specifically ABOUT it. I'm new here, so I guess I just haven't got the hang of this particular search engine...

In any case thanks to all who're taking pity on my n00bness!

ETA: The short answer (at least for those of us coming from digital sound experience), is that RAW is analagous to wav (complete, uncompressed information), and jpg to mp3 (compressed and thus with some degree of loss). I get it now!

Scott_Quier

divamum wrote:

Btw, I still haven't figured out why my own on-site searches didn't pull any of this up - I did get hits, but many (most) seemed to be posts about something else containing the word "RAW" rather than specifically ABOUT it. I'm new here, so I guess I just haven't got the hang of this particular search engine...

Some of it having been here a while and remembering having read and/or posted to various threads. The other half of the equation (at least for me) is that "google is your friend". You can list the keywords of interest and then tack on the string "site: dgrin.com" (no space after the ":") to have google restrict the search to just DGrin. BTW - I understand that works with other sites as well, though I've not yet had occasion to try it.

8zil

this has been talked about a lot, but basically raw is the negative, it holds all the information to be a picture, yet is not a picture, it need to be "developed" (otherwise what you get is a grid of RGB, with more green than anything else, think of taking a very close look to a tv) and that is where the advantage is, since you exactly all the things that the sensor captured, you have a lot more room for processing.


I seldomly shoot raw, but that is because I suck at photoshop, but I am thinkikng about starting to do so because if you let the computer do the procesing of the original RAW file, with more time than the camera in a few seconds, you can get better pictures without actually touching them in post processing....