What is RAW and how is it different from JPEG?

You need to decide on your own if working in RAW is right for you. There is a number of advantages of working in RAW.

First of all RAW is not simply and equivalent of a digital negative as some used to say. In short, your camera does whole bunch of things just moments after you pressed the shutter release button. It automatically applies various filters to the image like: saturation, contrast, sharpening. It changes the white balance either trying to figure out what suits best (Auto white balance) or uses the one you specified. Then the camera compresses your image to a small file called Jpeg. The RAW file will be about 12 Mb if your camera's sensor  is 12 Megapixel but a Jpeg will be much smaller size, around 3-4 Mb.

If you want to keep all these changes but do not apply them and have more control later for editing on your computer, then consider RAW.

However, there are disadvantages too:

• RAW takes much more room on your card;


• You cannot print;


• You cannot email;


• You cannot upload;


• It still has to be converted to Jpeg.

So you decide what you need more!