The RAW format is becoming very common within mobile phone cameras. The most advanced, except for the simplest iPhones on the market, have it built in. And if it does not appear in the configuration, we can always go to the applications that allow it. But Is it so important to shoot RAW with our mobile too?
The RAW format is the king of information in the world of digital photography. It is the raw information that reaches the sensor directly without the action of the processor, without the ‘developing’ you do.
It does not discard any data. It is the light that has passed through the lens and has been recorded in each and every pixel of the sensor. Is he naked file, without the interpretation of color, brightness, contrast or saturation.
This in theory, because many manufacturers are getting into the ugly habit of internally revealing the raw file and presenting it with a much healthier appearance than the competition. This is what we find in Sony’s ARW files or in the iPhone’s Apple ProRAW itself.
This is neither good nor bad, only if we are strict, a RAW file should not have any adjustments on the part of the camera’s processor. It should be called something else. If you have doubts, it is as easy as opening a RAW file in a program like Darktable, for example, and seeing the pure information.
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The advantages (or not) of shooting in RAW
I’ve been hearing that shooting RAW with mobile phones doesn’t make much sense thanks to computational photographyThat is, to capture digital images without total dependence on optics. Everything is changing a lot.
Thanks to mobile photography we do not depend so much on the limitations that we ‘suffer’ in the cameras. Everything has changed and many of us have a hard time understanding how much. We are no longer talking only about photography, but about computing in the full sense of the word.
It is very curious to talk about this subject with knowledgeable people. I understand myself better with photographers and I trust my experience, but I always seek to meet people who know more than I do. AND I am in the process of changing my vision on mobile photography.
If we stick with the knowledge of a photographer and forget for now the virtues of Apple’s ProRAW format, which we will point out later, today it is still interesting to shoot in RAW format over the classic JPEG. But there are already ‘buts’ …
The reasons have not changed. RAW format is raw information and JPEG is a lossy interpretation of that data:
- Contains all the information captured by the sensor.
- A RAW works with 12 bits (minimum), which is a tonal range of 4096 levels, well above the 256 levels of a JPEG.
- The demosaicing (the interpretation of the color from the Bayer matrix) is carried out in the editing program of our choice. This is how we get the result we need and in the future we can improve the performance.
- If we have enough knowledge, color rendering can be fine-tuned to unsuspected limits.
- You decide how you want to treat the noise. The obsession to remove it in direct jpeg files and even in ProRAW is striking.
These five reasons are enough to always bet on the RAW format when taking our shots. We have a whole free surface to work, to get what we need without depending on third parties.
And we are free to choose what we want during development. In the example photos I don’t like the sky blue so saturated that the JPEG renders. I am more comfortable with the one that I have taken in the DNG. Just to give an example.
A JPEG format, depending on how we configure it in camera, loses a lot of information along the way to lighten the weight. And the same camera decides the saturation, brightness and contrast that the image needs according to the parameters we have chosen. And it is what will remain for the future, with few options for change.
This is the main problem with JPEG. It is sold as a lightweight and easy to handle format. But if you don’t like the result, we can’t do anything to improve it with quality guarantees. RAW is always more open to change if the photographer knows how to do them. But there is mobile photography …
The special case of Apple ProRAW
In an article on this format that I wrote, I said that Apple ProRAW looked like a RAW developed with a custom style, as it is done in Capture One or Adobe Camera RAW.
And my interpretation is not entirely correct. As Alessandro Michelazzi comments, the reality of this new format is different. We are facing a richer file, which in addition to the advantages of classic RAW, incorporates all the information of computational photography.
Guillermo Luijk (thank you very much for your comments) clarifies that this is a DNG file (important collaboration with Adobe):
- They are not RAW: because they have already been demosaicing of the original capture. In other words, they do not reflect the sensor’s color filter matrix but are bitmaps with the three RGB components defined in each pixel, so they cannot benefit from alternative interpolation algorithms. We will also see that they have noise reduction applied so they are not strictly raw data.
- Yes they are RAW: in the other senses. They preserve the linearity of the sensor and preserve all (or almost all, more on this later), the information captured by it. So for the main processes of RAW development such as exposure adjustment, white balance, color management or tone mapping (wrongly called “recovery” of highlights and shadows), they have the elasticity of a RAW authentic.
We photographers want to achieve the highest possible quality and we get lost in the ins and outs of the news. The appearance of this new format opens a range of possibilities that we had never been able to consider.
Shoot in RAW or jpeg
The rules are changing. Of course, everyone can do what they want based on their experience (I think it is important to assess this point) and, above all, on the camera or mobile phone they have. Day by day, shooting RAW is a good option, also with a smartphone.
But, and it is the first time that I say it, if we work with a telephone, computational photography can help us work faster. All the advantages it brings are lost in a RAW.
In someway mobiles simplify the whole process that before there was no choice but to do it manually with great knowledge of the software in question. They give you everything done, everything cooked, at the table.
In the end it is up to us. It is no longer thinking only in RAW, but realizing what you can do and if the machine will do it better. I can’t count on that ProRAW yet, so I’ll still look more fondly at the raw format than at JPEG even on mobiles.
Time and experience will make me change my mind, for sure. For now, and lacking ProRAW I will shoot in RAW + JPEG format like the apprentice that I am with my mobile. Which format do you lean towards?