Should I be Shooting RAW?

RAW is a Mystery

RAW is a mystery to many, resulting in them using JPG when taking photos. There’s nothing wrong with JPG, but you are throwing much of the baby out with the bathwater each time you hit the shutter.

RAW is your Digital Negative

RAW is just the base data that your camera captures – think of it like the exposed film in your camera. Full of information, but no processing or printing done on it.

RAW is the key to your Digital Dark Room

If you go back to the dark room days, then this is just the very start point of the creative process – they did all sorts of magic with chemicals and dodge/burn tools… I’ve never used them but you hear about it.

Shooting RAW is just like this, you have the opportunity to get truly creative with your base RAW file.

Would you let Boots develop your treasured photos?

If you shoot JPG, it’s just like putting your film into BOOTS and getting your photos back in a wallet – they make all the decisions for you. Would you be happy to do that with your prized photographs you spent hours planning and composing? Letting Boots sort the saturation, levels, contrast and sharpness out for you? How do they know what you wanted anyway?

JPG throws the baby out with the bath water

And that’s just what JPG does – it makes many of these decisions for you. Now in many situations, this is fine of course – reportage wedding photography and sports photography are examples.

Keep your options open with RAW

But for most work, you’re far better keeping your creative options open by shooting RAW. Little things like warming a sunset up are easy in RAW, but unconvincing in JPG – one of many reasons to go RAW.

New McFade Course coming soon

Learn the power of RAW using Capture One or Lightroom with McFade Training – the course ready to go and is available as a 1-2-1 half day course. Group courses are to follow, watch this space.