Question 1

Is this shot from a JPEG or a raw file?

ANSWER (A) Score ½ (C) Score 1 The answer is (A), but you can award yourself a full mark if you ’fessed up and chose (C) instead. In fact, there’s nothing in the photo to clue you in – and no particular reason for shooting this as a raw file rather than a JPEG. The image needed no heavy manipulation or enhancement; it was easy to work out the exposure and the white balance on the spot; and the camera’s own picture style gave a perfect rendition of the colours and tones in the scene.

DYNAMIC RANGE The brightness range in this scene is pretty high, but still within the camera’s capabilities, so the darkest tones in this doorway and the brightest tones in the sky are rendered perfectly well by a regular JPEG image. There was no need for the extended dynamic range of a raw file.

COLOUR RENDITION This was taken with a Fujifilm camera using its Velvia film simulation mode. This produces rich, intense and lifelike colours that really suited this subject. If this was shot as a raw file, it would take a good deal of work with the colour controls to get this look.

WHITE BALANCE This was taken using the camera’s Auto White Balance setting. You’ll soon learn how your camera reacts to different lighting conditions and when to swap to a white balance preset. Shooting raw lets you choose later, but you’ll be surprised how often you opt for the ‘As Shot’ option.

NOISE AND DETAIL Generally, heavy noise reduction means a loss of detail too, so it’s often useful to be able to balance these carefully, and you can do that with a raw file. However, the detail/noise balance in JPEGs is often surprisingly good – and may actually be hard to improve on.