The question of whether it is better to shoot in camera RAW format is both misleading and complex. First of all, we’re all shooting in camera RAW, well anyone with a conventional digital camera is. As camera RAW data is the data captured by a digital camera sensor before processing, the question of whether a camera allow us to “shoot in camera RAW” is really whether the camera allows us access to the RAW data from the sensor, or whether it only allows access to a JPEG or similar file, after the data is processed. Most digital SLR cameras allow us to retrieve the RAW data and so do some better quality compact cameras.

The short reply to the question of whether it’s better to use camera RAW format is quickly answered with the further question “better for what?”. RAW data requires processing before it’s used to make a bitmap file or JPEG or sent to a printer, so if you’re interested in just getting your snaps printed straight from the camera or it’s memory card then RAW is not a convenient option.

The “trouble” with digital cameras is that they process our images for us if we don’t want to take the RAW data. Sometimes this is convenient and sometimes (often) it isn’t. Cameras don’t “see” things the way we do, and camera processing software doesn’t “appreciate” the same things we do. The program in the camera that makes images into JPEGs or other bitmap files usually tries to get more contrast into the midtones of an image, that is to say the parts of an image that aren’t shadows or highlights.

It is an attempt by the manufacturer to “help” inexperienced photographers make the most of a typical photo. For example, an average holiday snap may show a family standing on a beach, we might assume it’s a sunny day and the sky is bright, there may be some shadows areas around the scene. The brightest parts of the image would perhaps be in the sky, darkest areas maybe the shadows of the people on the sand. The mid-range areas could be the people themselves, the subject of the photograph. The camera processing software would sacrifice the brightest and darkest areas to make the most of the mid-range and you may get a nice shot of your family with nice detail in the faces.

But, what if you’re trying to take a landscape photo, what if the sky is important or detail in the shadows?

If we only have an image that’s already been processed by the camera, if the bright sky was deemed to be unimportant by the camera, if it was “seen” as just a highlight we may have lost all the detail in the sky. Maybe you’ve noticed the sky in your snaps is often burned-out or completely white or blank as we might say. If you’re a photographer with a bit of experience you may have experimented with your camera’s exposure settings, you may choose to try a “darker” exposure to stop the sky burning out, you may then find shadow areas in your image become too dark, losing detail in those areas.

Of course there are other, more advanced options such as exposure bracketing, but laying aside techinically difficult photos for this hypothetical example, what I’m getting at is that you could be involved in a battle with the cameras on-board image processing program.

In that case, you may want to stop using the cameras on-board image processing altogether, by taking the image sensor data before the camera processes it. In other words, the camera RAW data.

In the image on the right we can see an illustration of the way a typical processing by the camera’s on-board program causes us to lose image data we may wish to keep. The sky has been mostly obliterated as the camera “assumes” the interesting part of the image will be the mid-tone area, in this case the castle. This could be a fair-enough choice, the photographer is obviously trying to photograph the castle, but, we can also see in the second image that the sky data was in fact captured by the camera in RAW data, and with human intervention, can be a part of the final image.

Camera RAW is not the only way to deal with such problems, but it is one way that is becoming more accessible to photographers as the technology becomes more easily available, but a trend in consumer camera technology today is more automation, more on-board camera image processing, marketed as less need for human intervention. Which is best for you? You decide, but keep in mind, options are available.

There are other technical reasons to capture the camera’s RAW data. For example if you want higher bit-depth in your image files, maybe to compile a 32-bit HDR image - but more of this in a later tutorial…