Basic Photography | RAW vs JPEG | Why I Shoot RAW and Why You Shouldn’t

© 2009 Wazari Wazir | Blue Mosque | Istanbul Turkey

I don’t want to write a lengthly post about this RAW vs Jpegs, I don’t want to waste your time and my times writing something that unimportant here. First of all I would like to make things clear that Great picture is a great picture, it is not necessarily shot in RAW format, it is just a file format which have it’s advantage and disadvantage.

Yes I shoot RAW but I don’t shoot RAW all the times, before we go further and before you asked me what is the benefit of shooting RAW vs Jpeg, I would like to point a question to you, have you ever shoot in RAW before? If you said yes, then do you see any difference? If you see no difference, then maybe you don’t need to shoot in RAW or simply you can’t see the difference or fail to see the difference.

For those of you who are still new in Photography, RAW is almost equivalent to shooting with film, RAW is the Negative or “Positive” if you shoot slide, it is “RAW” because it is not yet being processed and different camera manufacturer have different RAW format or tolerance. Canon use CR2 format for 5D Mark II while Nikon use NEF format, both are RAW format with different name and they have different characteristic.

JPEG on the other hand which stand for  Joint Photographic Experts Group is already being processed inside the camera based on default factory setting, your setting or based on your customization. If you do it right, then there is no reason for you to edit the picture later in Photoshop or in any image editing software. Just download it into the computer and just upload it to the flickr , blog or website or anywhere that you want to share it or simply send it for print.

I know by this time, I still don’t answer your question, do you need to shoot in RAW? Let me tell you this, if you shoot with Nikon D700 with Large Fine setting, basically the image file will be 2.5 – 3MB but if you shot in RAW with D700, the file size for NEF or RAW file is around 15 – 16MB. You might asked why there is a big difference, the answer is very simple, RAW file contain more data, it is like uncut diamond, it will only shine through proper processing, which in this case proper editing. If RAW file is useless or just contained unwanted data, then why camera manufacturer invented it in the very first place. The reason is simple, they want the Photographer to have its final say on how the photograph should look like, rather than let the camera do the editing or thinking.

One thing for sure, shooting in RAW will slow you down and depending on your profession or depending on your interest, RAW might not suitable for you. For an example, if you are Photojournalist and always rushing to get your best shot and always in a hurry to send the picture to the photo editor, then shooting in RAW is not practical especially if you cover breaking news where they need the picture as soon as possible, in  less than an hour after the event being covered.

In photojournalism, it is the content or the story in the photographs that is most important and not so much about the highest quality of your digital file, please don’t get confuse here, there is a different between the highest quality of “picture content” and the highest quality of “Image File” in term of resolution, sharpness, bokeh or the quality of each individual pixels. Photojournalist are not scientist but a visual story teller.

But there are some photojournalist who shot in RAW, I’ve met some of them especially those that cover special project, photo essay or those that do documentary work where they don’t need to send the picture immediately to the photo editor until they finish their assignment like National Geographic photographer where most of the times they spent few moth in the field for certain assignment and the photographer usually don’t have to do the editing but the file will be handle by National Geographic staff for publication.

Basically if you care for details more than anything, RAW format is for you, if you are HDR fan, Landscape photographer or architectural photographer where details is important, then RAW file will give you an advantage, huge advantage. Can you imagine why NEF file contain 16MB data and Jpeg file contained only 2.5MB data? How much details has being thrown away to make the file small and if later on you decided to do the editing in Photoshop for further enhancement, a lot of details will be thrown away also. This make sense if you can think about it.

Once you understand some basic stuff about RAW vs Jpegs, you can make your own decision, like I said, I don’t shoot RAW all the times, in fact I shoot in JPEG for most of my official assignment pictures because my department require it for ease of handling and most people can handle JPEG  compared to RAW which require special editing skills or software.

For the picture of Blue Mosque above which I shot in Istanbul Turkey during my assignment there in 2009, I choose to shoot in RAW. Why? Simply because I want the highest quality of the picture since I can’t go there everyday, so it is better for me to get the highest quality image for that iconic Blue Mosque instead of low quality image. Yes you can’t see the benefit when viewing it for that size but let’s say if I wanted to make a huge print out of it, larger than A2 size, then only you can see the difference, there is a lot of details inside 16MB file compared to 2MB file. You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to figure it out.

The conclusion is, if you haven’t yet to shoot in RAW, please try it and compare it with Jpeg but off course to really see the benefit, you must have some basic skills in editing, especially in ACR or Adobe Camera RAW, otherwise how are you going to see the difference. Then if you think that you can’t see the difference or the difference is only minimal, then by all means don’t use it but for me once I know how powerful RAW file is, I never look back, but like I said previously, I don’t shoot RAW all the times, because each picture is different. One last thing, you can only feel that your money is well spent if you buy an expensive DSLR if you shoot in RAW, it is the best file format that your camera can offer, if only you know how to “polished” it.

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