(upbeat music) - I get a lot of questions
about raw files versus JPEG, and a lot of people not fully grasping exactly what raw files are. On today's Fast Friday,
although it may not be fast, but it is Friday. (bright music) Hi, everyone, welcome to Pal2Tech. Your Fujifilm camera allows
you to shoot either JPEG files, raw files, or both at the same time. You set your preferences
for this right here in the image quality section
of your Fujifilm camera menu. A JPEG file is a completely finished image that your camera fully
develops and processes the second you take the shot. The area here where you can adjust things like color, sharpness,
clarity, and so forth, is what the camera will
apply to its final JPEG before it saves it to the SD card. It has a JPG extension for JPEG. In order to keep the file size down, your camera throws out a lot of the color and other information before
it gives you the image. Your computer or device
can easily open JPEG files in a million different apps, but right off the bat when you do so, and then you save it back as another JPEG, it will be a generation
loss in terms of quality. Because of this and because
your camera is processing and converting this final image before it saves it to the SD card, the IQ settings in your Fujifilm menu become very important since they are baked into the final image that you're going to get. Now, I wanna talk about
what a raw file is. Unlike a JPEG, a raw file
is not an image at all. It's simply a binary blob of data that represents what your camera's sensor recorded at the moment you took the shot. You can't see or read
a raw file as an image, it's just a binary file. And therefore, most common
programs like web browsers, Instagram, Windows Photo
Viewer, and so forth cannot even read this type of a file. You need software such
as Lightroom, Photoshop, or Capture One that can understand how to read and convert
this binary blob of data over to something that you
can see and edit visually. A raw file size is also
a heck of a lot heavier than a JPEG file. And that's because it's
containing all of the data straight from the camera's image sensor. Well, it also contains
other stuff as well. Let me give you an example. Okay, this box of Fruit
Loops represents a raw file, and inside the raw file
is all of your image data. It's all in there, okay? But that's not all it includes. It also has some metadata with it. You see, it kinda describes about what type of photo you took, the camera settings
and that sort of thing. Not only that there is one more thing that's inside this raw file. And that is a small JPEG version of, it's sort of like a preview, a little JPEG so that you can preview this raw file. So basically you're getting three things. You're getting the raw
data, okay, the raw data, you're getting the metadata, okay? And you're getting a little JPEG preview. Whereas with a JPEG file, you're just getting the straight
up image and that's all. But there is a huge advantage to having all of this extra data. You get a lot more
flexibility and latitude when it comes to editing. (mumbling) Okay, I took a JPEG and a
raw of the exact same image straight out of the camera and I purposely shot it so that it would need
some additional work. In other words, we're probably gonna have to reduce these highlights
and bring out the shadows. If I go to my raw file, I'm gonna go ahead and turn
down my highlights, boom! And now I'm gonna go to my JPEG
and do the exact same thing. All I've done is turned down
the highlights, that's it. Next, I'm gonna go back to my raw file and I'm gonna bring up the exposure by say one and a quarter stops. I'm gonna go to my JPEG and
do the exact same thing. One and a quarter stops. That's all I've done, nothing else. The photo on the right is the raw file, the photo on the left is the JPEG. Look at how you have more detail
recovered in the raw file. There's just more sensor
data there to work with. One of the most important
reasons for shooting raw is to retain color information. You get a lot more of it with raw and it's a lot easier to
manipulate in post-processing, have a look at this. Okay, here's a photo that I shot that is in dire need of
correcting color balance. So let me go into the develop module, this is my JPEG right here
I am working on the JPEG. I am going to click the
little white balance dropper and sample this target
neutral right here, boom! Okay, it's better, that's the JPEG. Okay, let's switch over to the raw file and do the exact same thing. I'm gonna go ahead and click the dropper, select the neutral, boom! Have a look at the difference I got, now look at the cereal on the box, okay. Let's see if we can fix that. That's obviously overexposed. Let's see what we can do about it. I am switching over to
the raw file right here, I am turning down the
highlights, there we go. I could do a lot more with this, but for the purpose of this demo I'm keeping it fast and simple just to show you the difference. Okay, let's switch over to the JPEG. Same thing, let's turn our
highlights all the way down. Have a look at this. Now you do further color correction? Yes, I could make it a
little bit better than this. No question about it. But the bottom line is that the raw is always gonna give me more
information to work with and therefore it is going to look better. And that's because the JPEG doesn't have the color information, the tonality needed to
make these adjustments because the camera threw it out before it saved it to this SD card. Unless you have very specific reasons for only shooting in JPEG, then I would strongly suggest that you always shoot in raw format. In fact, I go a step further. I always shoot, no matter
what, in both raw and JPEG. You see this way, if
one day I wanna go back and have access to my original
negatives, so to speak, they're always there. Likewise, I love the
straight out of camera JPEGs from Fujifilm, and
sometimes I'm, you know, I'm just in too much of a hurry to bother dealing with a raw file. And by shooting both JPEG and raw, I get the best of both worlds. Of course, there is a
cost to doing it this way. If you shoot in JPEG only,
you can shoot about 110 frames and a burst of 15 frames a second. If you need that much
larger amount of frames that you could burst out
at 15 frames a second, then shooting JPEG only
will definitely help. However, the difference
between shooting raw or shooting raw plus
JPEG, is almost the same. And either way for myself personally, I find that 34 frames at 15
frames per second burst rate is plenty fast enough. Does it take up more storage space? Yeah, technically it does,
but you know something? Storage space is cheaper
and cheaper and cheaper and is getting cheaper and
cheaper and cheaper all the time. You never know what skill level you're gonna be three years from now, but I guarantee you
three things will happen as you continue your photography journey. Number one, you will get better, you will gain a more critical
eye over what you shoot, and you will want to
sometimes revisit shots that you've taken in the past. Number two, software developers will keep we're releasing
updates and new versions to their raw processing
programs like Lightroom, so that photos you shoot raw
today and process raw today could actually look even better when you run them through an
updated software processor at some point in the future. Your photos can actually
improve in quality over time because of technology. And number three, you will be so glad that you have these raw files archived and waiting there for
you, perfect, pristine, and containing all of
your camera sensor data exactly, exactly the way it was on the day that you
originally took the shot. Well, I hope you found this video helpful. If you did be sure to give
it the like and subscribe, and have a great weekend. I'll see you in another video next week. So long. It's all in there, okay? Oh, I'd forgotten how good this cereal is. I haven't had Fruit
Loops since I was a kid this is delicious. I'm feeling this sugar rush now. Cut. Now I got to clean up this mess. (laughs) I'm not completely crazy. Before I dumped all
that cereal on the desk, I covered the lens with a lens gap, just saying, just saying. (bright music)
