Info on RAW photos

[Rimsy]

Hi
First off I'm a total newbie when it comes to photography and still very much learning about the technical aspects of it all so sorry for lowering the tone a bit as I know there are some really knowledgeable people round here.
I'm debating whether to get a proper camera (trying to decide between a fuji X-T10 and a rx-100 mk3) as I really enjoy snapping away with my phone when out and about in the countryside but need to understand exactly what benefits I'll gain aside from general IQ improvements.
One thing I'm sort of intrigued by is RAW files and what it let's you tweak. For example I took a shot over Christmas which I quite like but the sun got way overexposed (I think that's the right word?).
Would taking that photo in RAW allow me to tone down the sun so it looked more natural?
I don't want to get into the mindset of "fixing everything in post production" but just curious as to what all this new (to me) tech can do.

 

[Clum]

Yes, you will be able to recover more details from the shadows and highlights when shooting RAW over jpeg. When it comes to the sun though, you are never going to be able to bring much back if you are exposing for the ground, as it will just be too bright and blown out. The only way around this would be to either use ND filters, or to use bracketing and take multiple exposures which can be combined in post.

Everyone that plans on doing any post on their photos should shoot in RAW imo. Jpeg is for folk who just want to take images straight out of camera and upload to facebook.

 

[Genoma]

On RAW vs. .jpg at a very high level - the difference is the RAW is the, well, "raw" data from the sensor. The data hasn't been compressed so you have all the photo information there to play with in post.

The .jpg has been compressed so some of the information has been lost. Your results might vary and will not be as good as edits over RAW files.

 

[Smeghead]

Personally I don't see anything wrong with the "fix it in post" mindset within reason. Obviously there's no sense in messing about with a poorly composed blurry picture, but if you want to get the most out of your camera, learning how to process RAW is a very important aspect of photography in my opinion. You can always shoot RAW+JPEG and try to expose as good as possible for the JPEGs, but if you find any keepers you're particularly proud of, RAW will almost certainly give you the opportunity to make it even better.

As for avoiding blown out skies, learning how to read histograms is also useful. Look up "exposing to the right" if interested.

 

[Rimsy]

Thanks everyone - appreciate the info. Had a read up on ETTR which was really interesting so thanks for that Smeg

 

[D.P.]

Modern sensors have a little more highlight headroom but much more shadow recovery than out of camera jpegs, so highlight recovery is still relatively limited. The Nikon D810 should do slightly better as it has a deeper electron well allowing a base ISO64.

ETTR is still the best way to go to maximize image detail, just watch your highlights and rem beer that most camera have histograms based on embedded jpegs and not the raw data so you may have q stop additional highlight headroom.


Some of the other advantages of RAW is things like white balance, noise reduction, sharpening, tone curves, aren't applied leaving you the freedom to adjust them in post. There is nothing wrong with out of camera jpegs these days, a good camera and good technique should get you perfectly capable images. Professional reporters and sports photographers will often use in camera jpegs to save time and have faster continuous shooting.