Waterfall in Autumn

[David Boyles]

I shot this in JPEG Fine mode on my Nikon D80. I was advised to start taking photos in RAW. Would it really make a difference in post production? Please advise me.

[ArkyMark]

That's a great shot you got! I have a D80 too - and I never shoot in anything but RAW mode..

If you let your D80 take that shot in-camera as a JPG, then I'd say you got really lucky with the exposure on that one. Maybe you tweaked it just a bit later? Well you could have tweaked it a lot more if you had it in the original RAW format! (.NEF for Nikons)

Basically - when the camera makes a JPG for you, it's automatically applying different settings like white-balance, contrast, sharpness and such to each shot as it records them - though all of this is usually adjustable through the camera's settings and you can customize these values as you like. However, as it applies these settings, it only keeps the information necessary to create a JPG of whatever size and quality you have selected - and it tosses out all the rest of the information it received from the sensor. That info is now gone for good unless you also saved a copy of the file in RAW format. (Which the D80 will do - save both JPG and NEF versions of the same shot if you set it to.)

The RAW file will contain ALL of the information that the sensor recorded in an original, un-processed state - and then YOU can decide what each shot needs.

The color-balance of the light you're shooting in becomes almost a moot point - since RAW files just records the light as they "see" it, and you can pick the color balance for each shot later. You also have a greater leeway with the exposure, and you can easily "add or subtract a stop or two" without effecting the quality too much. Likewise, darker parts of RAW files can often be brought out with great success because the information IS THERE - but on a JPG version this "buried info" has probably been tossed by the JPG-making process and is gone forever.

All RAW files do one other built-in trick : They "remember" every single adjustment you've ever made to them and NEVER discard the original data! So even if you make 1,000 tweaks to a RAW file, you can always un-do every one of them and return to any state you formerly had it in - even the original as it came from the camera - and not one byte of that original information from the sensor ever gets lost or permanently changed! This is often compared to having an original, undeveloped negative that you can "re-develop" as many times as you want. (Us old-school film folks couldn't even have imagined such a concept years ago ... unless we inhaled too many fumes from the darkroom.)

Sounds like a lot of work, I know, but if you shoot a series in RAW - say, a cloudy day at the zoo - you can find a good white-balance, contrast, saturation, etc. setting for one of the photos, then copy these same adjustments to all the others in the set at the same time.

A drawback is that the RAW files are big (approx. 10 MB each for the D80), and you'll undoubtedly wind up making JPG versions of them to boot. (Again, this can be done in a batch process) So all those files will take up space as your collection grows! But if you're really serious about getting the MOST out of each shot you take - RAW is the only way to go!

I'd also like to recommend Nikon's Capture NX2 program if you don't already have it. You can tweak RAW files (NEF or TIFF) and recover an amazing amount of "lost info" from your shots ... almost to the point of creating an HDR look! Nik's Viveza allows you to do similar tricks in Photoshop, and version 2 of it is due out in December 2009.

I think if you could see what you could have done with that shot taken in RAW and processed with CNX2 - you'd be sold. You can always download the free trial and give it a try!

ArkyMark ~ Shooting in the wilds of Arkansas ... and in the RAW!

[OsmosisStudios]

You've got a great shot (i'd have moved about 4 feet to the right, but thats just me). The only thing with it, technically, is that it's a bit "cold". The white balance is too blue: needs more orange. That alone should be enough to shoot RAW (It's the first slider)

You can also pull and play with individual colours in RAW, which can totally change the look of an image.