I only have one digital camera that can take photos in RAW mode. I bought the camera around 2002 or 2003 (I think) and never used the RAW setting because CF cards were expensive and the biggest card I had was only 256MB (plenty for JPEGs but way to small for RAW). With some time on my hands (day job ended yesterday) and no need to skimp on CF card space, I shot a few photos around my home using the old G3 (4 megapixel) in RAW mode. I’m not sure my old Windows based photo editors could deal with RAW mode. However, the current generation Apple iPhoto works fine with this format.
I’m pretty happy with what I see so far. And, while the RAW files are large, they are not gigantic compared to today’s much higher resolution JPEG images. I may carry this old camera around a bit and shoot more RAW images this week.
Good for you, shooting RAW is (most of the time) the best thing you can do. Now that cards are so cheap, shooting RAW is less of a problem. I’m curious, what camera did you have that shot RAW? Is it point and shoot or SLR?
There are still so many people who shy away from shooting RAW and they are missing out on so much flexibility.
I put together more details on the benefits of shooting RAW here:
http://blogs.adamparkerphotography.com/blog/Make-your-pictures-happy-shoot-in-RAW/18/
Prof Julie: I did not know about XnView Pocket. However, I looked it up after you mentioned it and found the URL in your comment has a typo. So, I corrected the URL in your comment. Many thanks for pointing out this freeware.
Did you know that the free xnView Pocket picture viewer for Pocket PCs can view, edit and convert RAW files?
wwwq.xnpocket.orghttp://www.xnviewpocket.org/