Why RAW's a good thing

Victor Habbick is a photographer, artist, designer and member of ePHOTOzine's Pro critique team. His work is published world wide and he supplies stock markets on a regular basis. His advice will range from kit choices and editing software to supplying agencies and finding inspiration. He describes his work as having commercial sensibilities with a touch of the surreal and you can find out more about this by visiting his ePHOTOzine profile or by visiting his personal website: Victor Habbick.

Here's his tip:

"With my Nikon D200 i tend to shoot in Raw mode but I also set it to safe a high quality jpg at the same time. This will up the processing speed a touch and use up the space on the camera chips but its a good fail safe and I find it handy to a have a jpg that I can view or email off quickly if a client wants a quick check etc. When I'm back I will open the Raw file in Adobe Lightroom. As most people will understand raw gives you the ability to treat each shot as you would have it and not as the camera decides it should look. It also has the biggest value of retaining an original file which you can go back to time and time again if you want to change things.

I have gone back a few times and treated this shot from a past vacation in Canada many ways and without having the Raw file this would have been a great deal more difficult. It's also pleasing to know that you have a base shot to re-start from at any time."