Photography Tips | Why Shoot Raw? | Because it RAWKs

© 2012 Wazari Wazir | Original RAW File | Unedit

© 2012 Wazari Wazir | After Edited With Adobe Camera RAW 7.2

I don’t want to write a long sermon bout the advantage of shooting with RAW, you can read it HERE about RAW advantage . What I’m trying to do here is to show you what you can get from RAW files rather than tell you to shoot RAW, I don’t have times to argue with you what is the advantage of RAW and what’s not. Even if you follow my advice to shoot in RAW, I did not get a penny, so better keep this entry short and sweet.

Ever wonder why RAW files is so big compared to Jpeg files? It is because RAW files contains a lot of data, a lot of information, it is uncooked material and once you process them with your post processing skills, you will get better details image compared to what you can get from Jpeg files especially when you photographing a critical subject like in the snow where most of the times, it is harder to get the details on the snow.

The tricks is, when you have the opportunity to photograph something critical like this, snowy scene or when you are photographing in a critical lighting condition where the highlight and shadows different are too apparent, then make sure you watch your camera histogram, make sure that, there is no part in the photograph get blown up, because once it get blown up, then there will be no details on that area and Photoshop editing will not going to help.

So when taking a photograph in a snowy area, I try not to let the snow area to get blown up, it may look “grey” or not as purely as white  on the camera LCD because I try to shoot a little bit underexposed, in my mind, I want to get that details when editing. So when I get back to ACR or Adobe Camera RAW 7.2 (Photoshop CS6), all I have to do is play around with Highlights, Shadows and Clarity sliders to bring back those details and I’m done. Simply said RAW is RAWKs.

*The photograph of me above were shot by Azman Jumat, we travel together to Kashmir, we both shot in RAW and those photograph were edited by none other than yours truly…