RAW file format - The new digital negatives
Submitted by Photographer’s Blog
Written by Michael Vass
Being a fan of digital cameras I am often looking through the net to find out what is going on. I especially tend to seek out options that might improve video and still pictures. As a growing business owner that uses several of these options it is important to know what is on the horizon.
That is why I thought that a new development in the industry could be of such a value. It’s a new electronic format that can be used in place of JPEG or TIFF files. It’s called the RAW format and its function is what its name implies.
Think of this as a digital camera equivalent of negative film. The size of the files are much larger, but it contains all of the information that your digital camera can capture. This is useful because this allows you to manipulate and reproduce the images stored in the RAW file with the latest technological advances. So in the future if it’s possible to produce crisper images, or to filter out say an over abundance of ultra-violet light, or remove the motion blur you will be able to do so with images taken years before the technology ever existed.
While it may be difficult to imagine exactly what advances may be coming, considering that storages space has now increased to as much as 6 Megapixels, providing more clarity and depth than ever before, I have to believe that software developers will be working hard to find ways to use all that space. And eventually I’m sure that at least some of that will become a welcome asset to my business, as well as personal life.
So the next digital camera you buy, check to see that it has the RAW option. You’ll thank me in a couple of years.
