Perhaps the most useful thing I've learned

Before University I had no idea what RAW was, I shot everything in Jpeg, now I'm going through all my old pictures I shot during college and I'm wishing I had known about the advantages of RAW.

So for all of you beginners who are just getting into photography here's some advice,

SHOOT RAW!!

If that hasn't pushed you into shooting RAW then here are some of the advantages,

1. The main reason most photographers shoot RAW is the files written to your memory card are uncompressed, which basically means using the right software, either Photoshop or Lightroom, you can access that uncompressed data and utilise the data and improve the tonal range of your images.
2. You should try to get it right in camera but if it happens and you over expose your images, you can adjust your exposure in post production, if you over exposure by 1 or 2 stops you can bring details back in photoshop or lightroom, this comes in very handy when shooting weddings which are both indoors and outdoors
3. Editing RAW in photoshop is a non destructive form of editing, when you edit a jpeg any editing you do to the jpeg file will induce digital noise, when editing a RAW file, you are not editing the original file, this way you can edit the original RAW file a million times and still produce a high quality image.

These are some of the pros to shooting RAW. here are some of the cons:

1. The file has to be edited, you can't just print a RAW file, it has to be edited to get the best results
2. As RAW is an uncompressed file format, the files written to the memory card are bigger than Jpeg, sometimes even 3 times bigger.
3. When shooting in a burst mode you will have a slower frame rate when shooting RAW, this is becausee of the bigger file sizes.

I hope this has shed some light on the Subject of RAW for you and will help you move into shooting RAW more (If you haven't already started!)

JPEG vs RAW

As you can see from the pictures the JPEG straight out of the camera is quite dull,  however with RAW file because the data is uncompressed you can make it more appealing to the eye.

If there are any subjects you'd like to hear about tweet me @JamilTeja

Stay Tuned for more Photography tips!