[dave 3000]

being new to digital photography I would like it if someone could xplain raw to me in simple terms. I am not a professional photographer...thanks Dave

[wilson44512]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAW_image_format

[wacor]

Welcome

I dont know the context of how the term is derrived but my guess is it would be the inital picture taken. With digital pics you can load them on a computer and make all sorts of changes. so the intial raw pic would be one that has not been doctored

[kaktex]

Originally Posted by wacor

With digital pics you can load them on a computer and make all sorts of changes. so the intial raw pic would be one that has not been doctored

No. RAW is a straight-from-the-sensor file. No in-camera compression, white balance, or jpg conversion, just the data from the sensor. Each camera manufacturer has their own proprietary RAW format, and if it isn't yet supported by the editing software manufacturers you have to use the camera maker's software to open the RAW file and convert it into something that can be opened in Photoshop etc.
RAW files are much larger than jpgs, record to memory slower, but have the maximum amount of image information, so more can be done with them in editing.

[wacor]

Originally Posted by kaktex

No. RAW is a straight-from-the-sensor file. No in-camera compression, white balance, or jpg conversion, just the data from the sensor. Each camera manufacturer has their own proprietary RAW format, and if it isn't yet supported by the editing software manufacturers you have to use the camera maker's software to open the RAW file and convert it into something that can be opened in Photoshop etc.
RAW files are much larger than jpgs, record to memory slower, but have the maximum amount of image information, so more can be done with them in editing.

Thanks

I stand corrected