Instead of writing why to take pictures in Raw right away, i will write about a story that i lived. I have a friend, Salvador, who is a talented young photographer. He always told me to take pictures in Raw and i didn’t listen to him for a long time. I thought having JPEG pictures about 2mb is much more efficient than having RAW images. I wasn’t sure why i need RAW pictures which are about 7-8mb per picture. But i understood later, he was right.

One day me and Salva went out to take some pictures in the city (Eskisehir / Turkey), again he told me to switch my storage type to RAW and again i didn’t we took some pictures together and day was over. After a couple of weeks i got an e-mail offering me a prestigious job and considerable amount of money to buy a picture that i took in that day. But the client wanted to use this work of mine in a billboard advertisement which requires very high resolutions in DPI (Dot per Inch). As i said before that day i took all the pictures in JPEG format which is about 72 DPI, but the client needed at least 300 DPI images. I told the client i don’t have the picture in such high resolutions and i’m sorry. He asked me to take the picture again which was not possible. So i missed a great opportunity.

The client wanted my picture for advertisement campaign of a bank in Belgium. The prestige of the job was much more valuable for me than the money they offered. But i missed the chance. I don’t know if i need to tell you why you need to take important pictures in RAW format?

If you are taking family, birthday etc. pictures than use JPEG format but for the subjects that have potential for being a great picture certainly use RAW format. You may be sorry, later.

Thanks to Salva for warning me all the time, and the client for showing me Salva was right.