THREE STEPS TO THE PERFECT RAW SHOT
48 DIGITAL CAMERA^ APRIL 2020 http://www.digitalcameraworld.com
1
Don’t get hung up
on white balance
It’s good practice to set the white
balance before taking the shot, but
lots of photographers are happy
to shoot in raw with Auto White
Balance enabled. This way the
camera chooses the white balance- but you can always change it
later if it results in a colour cast.
2
Don’t trust the histogram
The histogram maps out image
tones. If the graph intersects the
sides before reaching ‘sea level’,
it can mean clipped highlights or
shadows. But the back-of-camera
histogram is based on a JPEG, not
the raw file, so clipped pixels may
still be recoverable. It’s the same
with exposure warning ‘blinkies’.3
Expose to the right
This shooting method involves
capturing the most amount of light
without clipping the highlights,
so the tones in your camera
histogram are biased towards the
right. You can adjust the image
afterwards if it is overly bright.
By using this technique, the
shadows will be less noisy.CASE STUDY #3: Action shots
When you shoot fast movement, JPEG
can sometimes be the better choice
1 Fast-paced action
An action sequence is one
of the few times where shooting in
JPEG might give you an advantage
over raw, as you’ll often want to
shoot sequences in your camera’s
continuous high-speed mode.3 Buffer problems
If the buffer fills up, you’ll
have to wait for the images to write
to your memory card. (A faster
card write speed can help here.)
As such, shooting in raw might
mean missing a crucial moment
in the action sequence.2 Raws take longer
Let’s say your camera can
capture six frames per second.
It’ll be capable of firing off either
six JPEGs or six raws per second,
but the raws are larger files, so your
camera buffer will fill up quicker.RAW + JPEG
If you like the quality of raw
and the convenience of
JPEG, why not capture both
formats at once? This way, if
you are happy with the look
of the JPEG, you needn’t
bother editing the raw,
but it’s there if you need it.CAMERA
BUFFERS
After you press the shutter
button, your camera needs
to save the image on your
memory card. This can
take a split-second for a
JPEG, but slightly longer
for a raw. If you take
another shot before the
first has finished writing,
then it is temporarily
stored in the camera
buffer. Shoot a third, and
it joins the queue. So if
you shoot rapid-fire image
sequences, you need to
ensure the buffer writes
quickly. Memory cards with
fast write speeds (at least
a Class 10 or 100MB per
second) are a must.SHOOT IN RAW!