Discovering RAW

At home I have an Olympus 4040z, a good point-and-shoot camera from which I've gotten lots of good (and even a few 'great') photos. At work I just recently acquired a Cannon Digital Rebel XT. I've entered the world of digital SLR's, and been totally confused by it (I'm not a pro photographer). While I use digital camera's to capture photos for work related projects, I've never really gone through any photography training (which would probably be a good idea), so when I got my hands on the Digital Rebel, needless to say all the talk of apertures, focal lengths, etc., was a little unknown to me. I've been reading up on all of this, getting a bit of a clue about what all of the terms mean and how those things affect photography. But, my biggest happy discovery since getting the Rebel is camera RAW.

I had of course heard about RAW before and knew the basics of what it was, but since I'd never had a camera capable of RAW format before, it was not something I invested a lot of time or interest in to learn about. Maybe if I had I would have had a camera capable of it a long time ago. Now I'm hooked, and I wouldn't be surprised if my Olympus becomes my secondary camera very soon.

RAW format basically captures unprocessed photo data from the camera sensor. This basically means that it captures the photo without the application of any of the camera settings. The reason I love RAW format is the amount of data I have to work with when editing a photo, and the speed. While yes, it takes longer to go through and open the raw photo, process it, save it, etc., to me I have found that the speed at which I can improve a photo for levels, saturation, color, and so forth far outweighs the additional time spent in opening and saving the photo. In the end I find I get truer color, better exposure, better detail, and I can quickly get some really cool effects quickly and easily - all without actually modifying the original image, since you save the results as a separate file instead of altering the actual RAW file, so you can always go back to the original.

Instead of spending pages explaining RAW format in greater detail, I recommend you read an article by Dave Shea (creator of CSS Zen Garden) who also talks about the RAW format in his blog on mezzoblue.com. Also a new convert to RAW, Shea does a great job at giving a clear and easy to understand review of RAW. If you have a camera capable of RAW format, you really should understand its power and just how cool it can be. Check it out. Read Shea's Blog.