Oriens RAWConverter 1.2.601

Raw files are essentially digital negatives, or perhaps more accurately digital exposed but undeveloped film. Most digital cameras for producing images with professional quality, or amateur wanting to get the best possible digital images, use raw format for the majority of the work. Generally, photographers shoot RAW when they expect to perform some post exposure processing such as exposure or white balance to name a few. For example, for quality printing, it is necessary to maintain the maximum possible allowable post exposure processing. One does not lose nothing by shooting RAW except that is time consuming and the number of images you can fit on a memory card are limited.

Benefit of preferring RAW over JPEG/TIFF for professional photography:

Perform all the processing on the raw data on a fast computer at your convenience rather than in the camera. Since it is on a computer, you can now pick whatever white balance, contrast, saturation, sharpness etc. You can change many of the shooting parameters AFTER exposure. These options allow for different dimension of the photo to be generated from the raw data (eg. a negative film).

Perform the conversion to an 8-bit or 16-bit TIFF file. TIFF files are larger than JPEG files, but they retain the full quality of the image. They can be compressed or uncompressed, but the compression scheme is lossless, meaning that although the file gets a little smaller, no information is lost.

You get the full range of data from the camera sensor.

Without sharpening or compression (which typically accompany JPEG/TIFF format) you have not lost any data.

You can change your mind about some of the picture settings after you have taken it.