Why not Shoot RAW? Memory is cheap!
by mudanomanBy shooting RAW you are making the most of your camera and bring out the best of your photos via PP(post processing). The myth for some novice SLR photographers is that RAW is big (file size wise) and harder / more time consuming to work with.
Well, let me bust that myth for you. First, the price of flash memory and storage space in general has drop significantly, so the large file sizes should not be an issue. Second, if you are clumsy with WB (white balance) and selecting the perfect exposure setting while shooting, why not have some flexibility to adjust them later? Its added insurance at zero extra cost. Think of raw meat and seasoned meat, raw meat can be flavored to taste where as seasoned meat already has its original flavor and hard to change. Think of RAW file format as the raw meat and JPEG as the seasoned meat. Best of all, Pixmantec offers a very spiffy and FREE RAW program that can perform batch processing. No need to spend an arm and leg on Photoshop CS that your photo buddies swear by. Personally, I have both Photoshop CS2 and Pixmantec Essentials 2006 (will upgrade to premium soon), but use Pixmantec almost 99% of the time due to the ease of use and efficiency. No fear of processing the 5GBs of wedding photos!
I hope that dispelled some the skeptics. Once you shoot RAW you wont go back! I’ll share my RAW workflow in future, but feel free to leave any comments or questions you might have.
Happy Shooting,
Ivan
ibw photography
