Thursday, April 9, 2009

THE TEMPERATURE GAMUT - RAW

If your camera has an option for shooting in RAW format, I suggest that you try it out if you haven't already. Color temperature is such an important consideration in the way your photos turn out. Please see inset image. All three pictures are the same image; however, they have been adjusted along the range of color temperatures. The top image has a "cool" temperature of "2000"; the middle image has a "warm" temperature of "9400"; and the bottom image has a color balance temperature of "5450". (These numbers taken from my Adobe Camera Raw 5.3 RAW editing software. You camera probably came with RAW editing software if it can shoot in RAW format.) All off the changes that you see that I made to the image were non destructible in the sense that there was no loss of data in the process of making the changes. Not so with a JPG image; making these kinds of changes to a JPG image will result in some loss of data and that means a less nice looking printed image.
As a result of this technology, you can now go out and shoot images all day long without having to worry about setting your white balance on the camera every time you are in a new lighting environment. Just set your camera to shoot RAW and make those fast adjustment later in your RAW editing program.

- Bob The Camera Man
Hawaii Wedding Photographer

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