These days, we experienced a foggy winter’s day in the valley and drove up the hill to find that there’s sun above the cloud. Then I, moreover, found that the sundown behind a castle ruin just peaking out above the clouds created a wonderful color gradient, and I painfully regretted not having brought my digital DSLR.
On the other hand, the time to set it up would have ruined the photo opportunity anyway as I only had a few minutes before the sun would have moved out of this spectacular range.
So I picked my mobile phone, enabled the RAW mode camera and did the best I could using the car roof as a tripod.
However, the colors I saw did not seem to be captured in the image at first. It looked pale and flat on the screen , instead of the breathtaking colors I actually saw with my own eyes.
However, I shot in RAW so that my disappointment was soon giving way to hope: with a few sliders moved in Lightroom, the magic evolved and the image came out just as I envisioned it.
This is the photographer’s dream come true and the true benefit of the RAW format. All the true potential of an image shot is stored in the RAW information and can be exposed to match what the photographer saw.
So, photographers out there, use RAW whenever possible, even on you mobiles! It’s well worth the hassle and the additional storage is not wasted.