Why I Shoot RAW

Jim Grey of the wonderful Down the Road blog left a comment on yesterday’s post about JPG and RAW. I totally understand where he’s coming from. Shooting RAW definitely adds to the workload of a digital photographer and it forces him/her to spend time in front of the computer instead of out in the field, camera in hand. I wrote a reply to him that I thought was worth repeating as its own post (with some refinements and an addendum that I thought of late last night) to define the reasons why I am a hard core RAW shooter now.

So far, I’ve been able to come up with seven reasons why I shoot in RAW (and I may add to the list if I come up with more as I think about it). In no particular order:

1. The first is that I kind of like post processing. I’ve only had limited experiences working in darkrooms but I’ve always loved the St. Ansel idea of “The negative is the score and the print is the performance.” Working with digital post processing tools is as close to that experience as I’ve been able to get while living in the small apartments that I’ve called home for most of my adult life. While it’s not quite the same there’s still that idea of the RAW image being the score and the output, especially a print, being the performance which calls to me.
   
2. The second is that I like the idea of having lots of data available when I’m doing that post processing work. It’s always easy to throw surplus data away but it’s impossible to create data that isn’t there (although post processing tools like Topaz Lab’s Gigapixel AI are challenging that theory a little bit). I will grant you the fact that this does mean more post processing work but the added flexibility of the files is worth it for me.
   
3. The third is that when shooting JPG, I’m at the mercy of the camera’s JPG engine. Some of these are a lot better than others. For instance, Fuji’s JPG files in their mirrorless cameras are so good that a lot of photographers shooting Fuji just use JPG. Other manufacturers vary quite a bit. The cameras I have used range from dreadful to very good, but none have pleased me enough to abandon RAW yet.
   
4. The fourth kind of relates to the above. When I’m trusting the camera to do the work, I want to get it dialed in for the look that I’m going for. And that look may vary from one shot to the next. Take white balance for instance. When I’m shooting RAW, I usually just keep it on auto and figure that I’ll adjust any white balance misses during the RAW conversion. I’ve noticed that extreme lighting conditions can really mess up JPG files if the camera isn’t dialed in for the proper light source. Something like sodium vapor lighting (extremely orange) is usually beyond what the auto white balance can reliably accommodate and sometimes it’s hard to adjust for even with custom white balance settings. Situations like that mean that I’m even more at the mercy of what the camera is cooking in the JPG. Additionally, it means that I’m spending more time in the field trying to adjust the camera to the correct setting since I know that I’m limited. I’d rather spend that time shooting instead of adjusting image settings.
   
5. The fifth is related to the previous two points. When I shoot in RAW, I have a host of tools available to me for RAW conversion after the fact. I do most of my RAW processing in Lightroom since that’s also my cataloguing tool. I’ve never really liked how Lightroom converts Nikon files (though I do like how they handle my Canon files). They’ve gotten better over the years but I still find that I struggle sometimes, even when using tools like my ColorChecker Passport to get accurate colors. I have other options if I need them for an important file, though. Nikon’s own Capture NX-D offers much better looking RAW conversions (though it’s a maddening piece of software to use). I’ve played with Capture One a couple of times over the years and have thought about investing in it as another alternative but have resisted that because of the workflow considerations. Still, as bad as Lightroom’s RAW conversion is and as much as I dislike Adobe’s recent business decisions, it’s nice that most of what I do can all be done right where I have everything catalogued and with non-destructive edits. I’m starting to think about modifying this approach as I seek better image quality and also contemplate what I’ll do if Adobe requires Lightroom users to switch to the cloud based app — not something I’m willing to do. Options are good here!
   
6. The sixth reason that I like RAW is that I find that how I process pictures has changed substantially over the years. Part of this is that there are newer, better tools to use. Part of this is the fact that I know a lot more about image processing than I did when I first started shooting digital in 2004. And part of it is the fact that my tastes in what I want the end photo to look like have changed quite a bit over the years. I look back at some of my early stuff and I can’t believe some of the aesthetic decisions I made at the time! It’s nice to be able to go back to the original RAW file with a fresh look at the data just as it was at the moment of capture. With that complete data set, I have the most tools available to me which gives me the most adjustability for all of the reasons listed above.
   
7. The final reason (that I can think of at the moment) that I shoot RAW is that there are certain times when I’m trying to maximize data in ways that will allow me to post process images outside of the scope of a normal image capture. For instance, if I’m going to make an HDR or a stitched panorama as my final output goal, I like having the added flexibility of a RAW file for those purposes.

This is just what works for me. Every photographer is going to work differently and we’re all going to have our preferences about how we spend our time making images and what our end goals are. Your mileage may vary, as they say. And that’s ok!

As a way to close this out, here’s a file that was among those found yesterday that I’ve just given up on:

The sky is just cooked and there’s no data left to recover. While I’m not sure a RAW file would have saved this image, there would have been at least a little headroom for recovering some of those highlights. As it it, I’m hanging my head in resignation about this shot and admitting that shooting JPG here made a bad situation even worse. Ideally, I would have made sure to avoid clipping the highlights and shot RAW to give myself a little more data to work with.