Advantages and Disadvantages of Shooting Raw Files

Raw is an uncompressed digital file. In other occasions, this could be a partly compressed digital file format. Often time digital images are raw in format, an editing or retouch to become a complete or satisfactory image. Today people have resorted to shooting in raw files. The rest is done in the lab to come up with the perfect image. This practice possesses certain advantages and disadvantages as follows:

1.    Advantages of Shooting Raw Files

a)    Raw files are quite detailed

All the information captured and recorded by the sensor is retained by the raw files. This means that any camera can acquire a dynamic range capability and therefore can record both the light and the dark parts of a given scene without losing any detail.

b)    Ease to fix unclearly taken images

Usually, a 12-bit raw file produces 68 billion colours whereas a 14-bit can produce 4.3 billion colours. This is far much better, compared to the 8-bit JPEG format that only contains 16 million colours. Evidently, the raw files possess a greater bit depth important in the correction of the extremely underexposed images.

c)    Clean and high-quality images

Raw files being uncompressed files, there is no way, they can exhibit any of the JPEG-related compression styles, which distort the original quality of the image.

d) Camera settings are less required

For one to produce a raw file it means, a photographer does not have to keep on adjusting the metadata in order to acquire a certain shot. This is because the settings are already included with the file but not permanently as with the case of the JPEG format. Therefore, shooting raw files gives you an option of adjusting other settings later when editing.

e) Eases the problem of lens imperfection

Normally, no lens is perfect and therefore, any photo can contain the chromatic aberrations and barrel distortions. However, by shooting raw files, one can fix or minimize these problems rather than executing JPEG format that carries whatever imperfections during recording the image.

2. Disadvantages of shooting raw files 

Shooting raw files has its own disadvantages. They are as follows:

a)      Size of the file

Raw files are 2 to 3 times bigger than the jpegs, which means, only fewer files will fit on your memory cards and hard drives. Since raw files have a larger size, shooting raw will fill up the buffer of the camera so fast. Hence, one will have to wait for the camera to write to the memory card.

b)     Raw files need to be processed

Raw files are not usually processed in the camera. Therefore, one needs to do a manual edit by adjusting contrast, saturation, and image sharpness. Moreover, you will also need to convert the raw file to a more viewable format like JPEG. These practices need a lot of time. 

c)      There is no standardization

Each and every camera manufacturing companies have their own protocols for handling files shot raw. For instance, Nikon software cannot read Canon raw files and vice versa. However, the Digital Negative (DNG) format is the only one that converts the raw files into the universally accessible format.

Despite the fact that shooting raw files has disadvantages, if you want the best quality of your image, then shooting raw files is the way to go.