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Indecision: Get a camera despite having a phone
Hi, Tildes. Another rambly post in an attempt to get authentic advice. Thanks in advance. :)
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I'd like to crowdsource your experiences before making a big purchase (a camera made for selfies). If anyone was in a similar situation did you like having your phone and your camera separate, etc. I currently have an iPhone SE 2022 to provide more context.
Why I'm considering buying a camera:
- preserving high quality moments with high quality digital photos of people I'm with, don't care so much for all the fancy settings to get the perfect shot of a landscape (but that's a welcome bonus of course)
- provides a way to be less dependent on a phone
- maybe eventually taking videos or vlogs with it
Why I'm hesitating:
- is a smartphone already enough? + two devices may be a bit cumbersome but maybe worth it for the difference in quality?
- is it annoying to always have to bring it?
- too expensive for what a phone already does?
I've done SOME research as well into this while I've been back and forth this idea for months: If I crack and decide to get a proper camera (without your advice of course), it would be a Sony ZV-1F. But open to suggestions for other models too! It's just to give an idea for people to understand what I'm sorta kinda looking for.
“The best camera is the one you have with you”. This holds true for your phone almost all the time.
A separate camera has a single specific purpose: To take photographs. So this means bringing it with you. And this can be annoying.
That said, most photos taken with a proper camera and lens just look so good. The colors are better, the details are better, the bokeh is smoother. The difference is often huge. And I’m much more likely to print and frame these photos than the ones I take with my phone.
Maybe get started with a second hand camera and a good lens? It doesn’t get you the latest and greatest features, but the image quality is still very solid. Get a prime lens such as a 50mm, learn to use the camera and take some amazing portraits.
If OP does get a camera with detachable lens, I recommend a MFT (micro four thirds) lens mount. The sensor is a little smaller, but the lenses are much smaller, cutting down on the annoying to carry factor. MFT have the added benefit of being allowed in most sadiums/events as well.
I have an Olympus E-M10 Mk II. It's a fun little camera with minimal settings. It also just looks slick, has a bit of a retro film camera vibe.
Additional info for OP: there's several classes of camera that depends on the size of the sensor. Roughly speaking, there's a factor of 2 in the size of the sensor for each step. From biggest to smallest you have:
I've always heard this parroted, but I don't think it's true and the rest of your post highlights why for me. Taking photographs is a deliberate choice for me, so I always preselect the camera I'll use. My Fujifilm X100VI takes such better images than my iPhone that I'm also more likely to print and frame. I can't remember a time I was out and about and regretted not having a camera to capture a moment. But perhaps that's because I'm an amateur photographer rather than a professional, so I don't feel an obligation to always be capturing photos. I do have a few photos shot on my phone on my gallery, but I could live without them. They feel so much inferior to me than the ones taken with my dedicated camera.
I fully agree with your advice about getting a second hand camera. Definitely stick with a single prime lens while you get comfortable taking photos. For me, that's a 35mm lens. It's my favorite focal length, but it's also what I had when I started taking photos.
I don’t think anything you said disagrees with that advice. You just happen to have your fujifilm on you most of the time, so it is the better camera. For someone else who had a fancy fujifilm camera but never brings it with them, their phone would be a better camera. The advice isn’t saying to only use the camera that is with you 100% of the time. It is just saying that a camera that you keep in the box doesn’t do you any good.
I actually almost never have my Fujifilm on me. I save it for occasional travel. My point was more that when I'm in the mood to shoot some photos, I grab my camera. But when I'm out and about day-to-day, I'm not suddenly reacting to a situation and grabbing whatever camera I have at the time to capture that once in a lifetime shot like a photo journalist would. Photography for me is an intentional hobby. Put differently, if I didn't bring my Fujifilm, I'm not taking any photos.
So I think the advice only applies to a very specific type of person (perhaps the type that owns a camera) that's always looking to capture photos, and I'm not sure that most people fall under that umbrella.
I think I resonate more with the quote @imperialismus brought up:
Having been there many times, you don't always get to "preselect" your camera unless you always carry one with you.
Some of my best photos aren't intentional, but I rather found the light hitting something just right and took a photo with whatever I had. Sometimes it was a proper camera, sometimes my phone.
When I was younger, I carried around a full DSLR (Nikon D200) pretty much everywhere. It did get amazing photos, but my back hurt eventually :D And at the same time phone cameras got better and better, eventually reaching the point where I decided the quality was Good Enough for me.
Later on I got into micro 4/3 cameras, got a few of those. Easier to carry with me - but again phone cameras got better at photos (Live Photo) and videos and could easily take photos in low light, which is important in the Nordics. I eventually sold my 4/3 setup because I stopped taking it with me.
Much much later (3 years ago?) I got back into 4/3 and do take it with me when I'm Taking Photographs, but 99% if my day to day stuff is captured with my phone. Unless I pixel peep, it's next to impossible to see the difference in practice to my 4/3. Neither of them have the pretty bokeh full frame cameras have.
Maybe I'll get into full frame cameras again, possibly even film. Or get a pretty Leica for artsy stuff. But that one photo of my dog with a silly face will still be taken with my phone, that's on me or near me most of the time.
Yeah, I basically agree with this. A dedicated camera will take much better pictures, but only if you actually have it with you, and long gone are the days where phone cameras always produced noisy mush.
There's one other point I'd make: for me to go from zero to taking a picture with my phone takes at least a couple of seconds (dig it out of my pocket, open the photo app, frame up, hit the shutter button, wait for shutter delay). For an SLR on a neck strap, it's under half a second (put it up to my eye—there's no electronics in the viewfinder path—the camera takes a few hundred milliseconds to come out of standby when you half-press the shutter button, then autofocus is another hundred milliseconds or so and shutter delay is negligible). So if you want to be ready for (that is, ready to photograph) anything, a dedicated camera will serve you far better just from response time.
Also, while Canon and Nikon both make excellent 50mm prime ("prime" meaning "not zoom") lenses, my recommendation to start out would be to stick with the standard kit lens (usually an 18-55mm zoom or so). Enthusiast photographers will pan them, and you can do a lot better (if you spend a whole pile of money), but they're extremely flexible and loads better than the tiny chip of glass that can fit in a smartphone camera.
IMO no, from your description. The Sony ZV-1F isn't really a photo camera anyway, it's meant for vlogging.
I do carry around a camera, but I enjoy photography. I think that's the main question: do you enjoy photography? If the answer is no, and you just want the utilitarian result of "having photographs of OK quality", then a phone will do you more good. They're pretty good at doing the boring job of capturing reality.
Where a dedicated camera plays into is for both the tactile, mechanical feel of using a camera, as well as opening the doors to more creative possibilities. A larger sensor will give you things to play with like real depth of field, better image quality, better inherent low light, and so forth.
And so, if you think you might want a camera, I'd suggest either any APSC Fujifilm or any APSC Sony. M34 is a dead mount, for all intents and purposes. Full frame is probably too expensive for beginners. Canon and Nikon don't really give a shit about their APSC lines. Used is fine.
I'm a fairly serious photographer, and very fond of dedicated cameras, but: No. I wouldn't recommend a dedicated camera just to preserve memories, if you don't have at least a moderate interest in photography for the sake of photography. Phone cameras these days are good enough to preserve most memories. There's an old adage among photographers, "f/8 and be there", meaning, technical details are unimportant compared to simply being in the right place at the right time and pushing down the shutter button. A phone is a lot more likely to be with you at the right moment. I'd rather invest in a newer phone with a better camera system, if the intent wasn't to take on photography as a serious hobby for the sake of photography, but rather, mostly to preserve moments and memories.
I have a dslr, and I find the photos are better even in brightly lit scenes (where smartphones perform best) The aperture is key and so much more varied in a real camera along with pixel size. Having. Said that, my iPhone does HDR much better, autofocus and video. I still use my phone for most pictures, but I get some great photos I couldn’t get otherwise on my real camera.
Thanks for the input! Those might come in handy when making the final decision! :D
I don't have a definitive advice here, as a lot of it also comes down to personal preferences. So I am more or less providing my thoughts, but am not drawing a final conclusion.
If you don't care that much about detailed settings, the biggest advantage a dedicated camera has over a phone is the choice of lens. Because it isn't limited by the size constraints of having to fit in a phone body. The sensor also comes into play, but doesn't nearly affect the picture quality as much these days.
The Sony you are eyeing seems to be mostly aimed at vlogging. Which seems to be reflected in the lens. Which is a fixed focal length lens with no zoom, wide angle and can't be changed. So while you do get some benefits of a dedicated camera, they aren't as pronounced maybe compared to other cameras. You still get a wider field of view than on most phones, so for landscapes it might actually be a decent camera as well. But for some other things it might be less suitable.
If you don't have strong expectations here, then this camera with this lens is probably fine, and it will get you very decent photos. It also does have some other pretty decent features like the big fold out screen, good autofocus, good stabilization for videos, etc.
With that in mind, I think your hesitations in combination with the Sony model you have considered so far are valid ones. I am by no means an expert, but this camera specifically might not be as big of an upgrade visual compared to what you'll get with other cameras.
Other cameras can come with lenses that provide optical zoom, various fields of view, etc, etc. Not to mention cameras where the lens can be changed out for a different one depending on the circumstances. Which probably is overkill for what you are looking to do, but going for a compact mirrorless camera body with interchangeable lenses would allow you to at least pivot to a different type of lens down the line.
Having said that, if we move one from lenses, dedicated cameras also have some other benefits. Like bigger sensors (resulting in cleaner low light shots in some cases). You also tend to get better microphones (at least through external input), choices for light/flash, etc. Finally, cameras are just slightly more ergonomic for taking pictures. I mention these points last, as I am not sure how heavily they weigh into your considerations.
Finally, I should mention that some people find they make more intentional photos when they bring a dedicated camera, which in itself can result in more valuable memories and better pictures (due to framing, etc).
Hey thanks for writing despite your hesitation about it not being definite. It was cool to have a pulse and have some more information things I might've missed.
From your comment, I think I realized two things: I didn't even think about interchangeable lenses + Perhaps the model I was looking at, ZV-1F, didn't bring too much to the table for the price. The decision-making goes on but I'm glad I have more direction!
Experienced professional photographers can take professional quality images on a phone. Most of the rest of us will benefit from better hardware. The advantages of a proper camera come in things like better colour rendering due to bigger sensors, dynamic range, control over settings/options, better performance in low light/fast motion/other edge cases and most importantly of all, lenses. There is no known way for a tiny phone lens to approach the optical performance of even a cheap kit lens. Physics has hard rules on this. You can get proper bokeh (background defocussing) with a real lens, the computational versions (aka "portrait blur" on Android) are nowhere in comparison. A cheap lens will also out sharpness a phone without needing any nasty software sharpening.
A small mirrorless camera with a pancake lens on it is not too much trouble to carry around. It's almost pocket size, depending on your pockets. But you probably already carry a bag. It goes in there. Easy. You don't need a massive camera bag full of stuff these days.
Get a cheap used mirrorless camera, not an expensive new one. If you use it, upgrade. If you don't, you're not out much money. Someone else mentioned getting a prime lens, they are right. You can zoom with your legs, but you can never compensate for the crispness of a decent prime over a hyperzoom. Don't sweat the hardware at this stage, just get something small and affordable. It's far more sensible to learn the ropes now and spend the big money later when you know what you want. Maybe you want a massive DSLR instead, maybe you do want a big zoom, who knows - this is the "find out" stage, before you build up a bag of gear you actually want.
Fuji make excellent cameras and even better lenses. They're better than Sony imo. But I am biased due to having sunk a lot of money into their system over the years. I currently use a Fuji XE2 which can be picked up used for a few hundred and is capable of anything you would like it to be, pretty much. Don't worry about using ten year old hardware, it's fine. This is not a fast-moving field. Buy used from a camera shop, they'll have checked it all out. Glass can be even older - one of my favourite lenses is older than my parents!
My experience with this has been that I take way less pictures.
I bought a Motorola Razr because I wanted a smaller phone that fit in my pocket (it's been great for that and I've essentially replaced a purse with a carabiner). The Razr though doesn't have a great camera, and coming from a Pixel 5 it was very noticeable. I have a DSLR camera and thought I would have an excuse to use it more - but the DSLR is not small and some places (events like concerts and such) have rules against bringing them in.
I found an Olympus TG-7 on marketplace and started carrying it with me, but I noticed it seems like the act of pulling it out, taking the lens cap off, and turning the camera on seems to be too many steps for me to do automatically in the same way that I was previously just opening the camera on my phone.
My pictures are overall better, because it takes more thought and time, and maybe that's better overall than the seemingly millions I took with my phone before? Quality over quantity? But I do miss just being able to quickly snap something without even thinking and having a picture that came out well enough
So you want a camera. On the smartphone vs dedicated camera debate, I often like to make a culinary analogy.
You can survive eating only your supermarket prepared meal. Just put it in your microwave / oven and your you're good to go. It may even taste good or excellent (those IKEA meatball are a meme for a reason). They have armies of food scientist, tasting panel participant and so on to develop the product, so it stand to reason that this kind of food is at least palatable. And you just need a microwave or an oven!
This is your smartphone camera app. Again: there's a tight integration of hardware and software engineer, color scientist et al. just to make your life easy and capture a decent picture when you press the shutter on your screen.
With homecooling, there's two thing it unlocks: 1) you can choose higher quality material and 2) you have the possibility to cook yourself. Those two things doesn't make you automatically a tastier meal; you can still screw up your a99 wagyu steak (insert you plant based alternative of choice here) that has been blessed by high ranking monks in the mountains by overcooking it (or boiling it).
But if you nail the prepatation, it can be noticeably better than anything you can find in a supermarket. And when you feel lazy, nothing prevents you to throw those ingredient into a thermomix to have something quick and easy.
And so with photography, a bigger and better camera will not automatically produce better picture. You can still screw up. But at minimum you'll get can get more details in your picture because of the higher size of your sensor, and the quality of the optics in front of it. But if you engage in the art and craft of photography, you can improve as a photographer and have the means of putting thing in manual where it makes sense and leave stuff in automatic when it's especially convenient (we mostly leave autofocus on, and knowing which exposure automatism to use depending on the situation is something you'll get used to)(culinary analogies : home made puff pastry or ramen noodles - it's not worth it).
As other mentioned, the actual operation of a dedicated camera is vastly different (and better) compared to a smartphone. You can have a proper grip instead of an awkward hold. I'd say that having a viewfinder (compared to a screen) also helps tremendously. When the only thing you see is the picture you're going to take, you notice thing you can easily miss with just looking at a smartphone screen.
As other also said: every dedicated camera (with manual controls) released in the last ten years are good to excellent. I'm going to cover a week long LARP event next week with hardware that's 9 and 7 years old and I have total faith in them.
Granted, it's enthusiast and/or pro level gear (my dad's Nikon D810 with a 18-35 2.8, and my Fujifilm x-t3 with a 24-70 2.8 equivalent I'm renting) but the bottom point is: don't hesitate to check the second hand market, there's good deal to be had.
So I have a dedicated camera (hobbyist level) and so have a few thoughts.
As others have mentioned, the form factor of a camera over a phone lends itself to a much better experience.
For certain activities, I really enjoy the process of leaving my phone behind and only taking my camera. There are times when I carry my camera around and hardly use it. That is just part of the experience, and you have to get used to that. However, I also have some beautiful photos that I want to eventually frame some of my photos to display on my wall above my desk. I very rarely got photos like that with my phone (and one photo in particular that I quite like taken on my phone, is too low of a quality to frame).
I do not always carry my phone on me, nor do I always carry my camera on me, sometimes I have neither. I have never been in a situation where I want my phone but do not have it, but I have been in situations where I want my camera but do not have it.
For me, phone pictures are never artistic and purely functional (I need to take a picture of a screen, when doing IT work kind of thing).
Carrying around a camera prompts me to look for pictures more. Since I use a DSLR, I can just pop off my lens cap (if I even have it on) and look through the viewfinder and see if it frames nicely before even deciding if I am going to turn my camera on. I have found that a phone never really prompts me to think "would that make a nice picture?" but my camera prompts me to investigate if something would make a good picture or not.
In general, I push back against the concept of the smartphone as the do it all device, and have moved towards a mentality of using dedicated devices. When you engage with a dedicated device, it is always a nicer experience, but you have to make peace with either carrying around more things or occasionally regretting that you do not have that dedicated device with you when you need it (or probably a mixture of both). A dedicated camera falls into this, where you may enjoy using the camera over your phone, but there are trade offs and that is something you have to think if you are willing to do.
Completely agree. I don't find I can capture photographs that move me in any particular way with my phone. It feels much more utilitarian.
Like you, I love using devices with a specific purpose. I have Kobo for reading books, a game boy for games, and an iPod for listening to music. I love all of those devices!
I am using a similar list of devices as well. I plan on in the near future doing a longer write up here on Tildes about this approach, but still working on the music player before I do that.
Another thing I remembered that I forgot to add in, is that the more you use a dedicated camera the smoother the experience is. I never read the manual for my camera, so I slowly discovered features as I used it more. Changing settings is really quick for me, because I know which buttons I need to press without looking. I did not realize for the longest time that at the bottom of my viewfinder there is a display with settings and an exposure meter. These are things you learn through using your camera over time, but make using the camera a smoother experience over time. Whereas with smartphones, while there are settings, there are not physical button combinations to memorize to make a smoother experience.
Since you say that your goal is quality photos of moments and that you don't care for extraneous fancy settings, I'd say no. Most of photography is lighting, composition, perspective, and set up to begin with. Post-processing is important too. Most people who buy a DLSR/mirrorless camera don't take any better photos because they don't work at these important aspects. In other words, there are many practical ways to improve photo quality, and camera equipment is far from the top of the list.
Given that phone cameras are pretty good and some significant post-processing can be done with any photo, I don't think a fancier camera will help with quality of photo. If you are working hard at all those non-equipment aspects and find yourself wishing you could alter the depth of field, have greater detail for post-processing, find the way your phone handles dynamic range to be limiting, feel the need for extreme zoom or macro shots, etc. then it would make sense to look for a dedicated device.
Especially considering that OP is looking for a camera for selfies, I would not suggest getting a camera. If you are looking to take selfies, a phone is generally the two things everyone is already mentioning: already in your pocket and plenty good enough. If the front facing "selfie" camera isn't quite cutting it, your phone already has a (generally) better camera attached to the back. Find the setting that lets you push a volume button for shutter and snap away (so you don't look like a doofus trying to push the on screen shutter button.)
The art of a composed self portrait photograph is pretty difficult with a camera... there are lots of settings! If you aren't messing about with those settings... the camera isn't really necessary.
Smart phone sensors are also very good these days, better than lots of camera sensors were in the past. I've won a couple photography contests with a couple well-composed pics from my smart phone. I have printed pictures taken from my (and my wife's) phones hung all over my house. They look great! Just don't do the inexperienced move and blow them up into a pixelated mess (which is also a problem for camera-shot digital photos, but you do get more leeway.) Otherwise, how are you consuming these pictures? On your phone screen? On a computer monitor? Through Instagram/Facebook/Snapchat/whathaveyou? It's a waste of money, in my opinion, to purchase a camera for better photo quality and then consume them via inferior means (or, more likely, never consume them at all! I'm guilty of that too!)
Instead of buying a new camera, I'd save the money and invest it in a new smartphone with a better camera. Have heard good things about the new iphone 17. My wife has the same phone as you (iPhone SE 2022) and the quality is quite a bit worse than my Pixel 8. She had an iphone 11 from work before that and even those pictures were better than her current SE.
I have a DSLR myself that gets used about once a year for special evenings, even then it can be cumbersome to get out and use.
I'd get a new phone with a better camera if I were in your shoes.
I've taken photos that I felt were good enough for my gallery with an iPhone SE. I wouldn't be so quick to judge the phone. I think great photographers can capture excellent photos with a iPhone SE.
But I vastly prefer using a dedicated camera for photography. For me, it's less about the absolute quality of the photo and more about how a DSLR changes your approach to photography. Having a viewfinder is a much more intimate setup for composition. Being able to adjust aperture, shutter speed, ISO, focus, and your focal length makes the experience quite different from a phone that automatically focuses and applies and algorithms to come to a predefined look for the final output.
First off, I know someone who bought a fixed lens camera like the one you’re considering and they ended up regretting it. If you end up with a serious interest in either photography or video, you’re going to end up buying another camera so you have lens flexibility. It’s basically my philosophy on kitchen appliances, I won’t buy the best of the bottom tier but I might but the worst of the middle or top tiers.
If you want to try this out and see how it goes, I’d highly recommend borrowing or renting a camera. A few libraries offer camera equipment for check out, but I don’t think it’s very common. If you know anyone who has one, ask to borrow or rent it from them for whatever next activity you would want a dedicated camera for.
If you don’t know anyone with equipment to borrow, head to your local camera shop and rent a camera and a lens or two from them. (/u/timo mentioned a 50mm, that’s a great choice for photos of people) Make sure you have appropriate media to record onto. If you want to do video, you could grab a tripod that will work with the camera as well as a microphone and make sure the camera has an input for it or you’ll need more equipment. Communicate with the person you’re renting from, tell them what you plan to do and ask for advice. If they’re closed one or two days a week they may not charge rental for those days. Be prepared to pay a security deposit.
There are a few benefits of renting or borrowing first:
Used cameras are often pretty reasonable, especially if they’re a few years old. Used lenses can be iffy if you don’t see them in person first, moisture can get inside if they aren’t stored properly,
I know not everybody is like that, but personally I find it difficult to switch my mind to "photo mode" with a phone camera. I just snap things that usually end up not being that great. With an actual camera I take pretty decent pictures and find it easy to think about what pictures I take.
Generally the worse the lighting conditions are, the bigger the difference between a real camera and a phone camera... But sometimes to get the most out of a real camera you need to shoot raws and develop the pictures yourself. I don't have comprehensive experiences with current models, but I think that a good phone still has more robust automatic processing than the average mirrorless, but the average mirrorless has miles better input data, so usually the result looks better as well even with shooting jpegs and not doing any manual processing.
But honestly the ergonomics and the mindset switch of using a real camera are the biggest differences for just snapping photos of family etc. Hard to say if that's worth it.
Oh yes, I might actually have the same thing!
Do RAWs actually need to be developped physically or are there programs for that? (Might be a dumb question but I assume the fact I am a total noob lol.)
There are programs to work with RAW image files. There are expensive options from Adobe (and probably affinity as well, but I am not sure) but also open source programs like darktable and rawtherapee.
Darktable is very weird but it’s great software once you grok it!
RAW files need "developing" in software. You can batch process them but there's not much point doing that. Don't shoot RAW. It's pointless and will just add hours to your workflow. As an amateur you don't need the features of RAW, and you'll end up with an SD card full of files you don't have time to process. Find some JPG settings you like and use those.
My camera allows me to fast switch between a stack of pre-configured (some by me, some supplied by Fuji) JPG settings and it's so much nicer than messing about with RAW files. I like the restrictions it places on me, same as a prime lens does - when I'm taking pictures it makes me spend time thinking about composition rather than post-processing and composition is everything.
I would strongly recommend not listening to Ken Rockwell. The guy is extremely opinionated, and his opinions are frequently controversial among serious and professional photographers. For good reason. This is one of them.
RAW isn't going to add hours to your workflow, unless your workflow is very inefficent to begin with. You don't batch process hundreds of photos, you pick the best ones, make any necessary adjustments, and then convert those few RAWs into JPGs or TIFFs or whatever other format. Would you print 200 photos from a single photo session? Send your family a folder of 200 images of the same event? Probably not, at least if you're a semi-serious photographer. Processing a single RAW image into JPG or TIFF takes just a few seconds on my mid range PC. It was manageable even on a 2010 Macbook (not even a pro). Unless you save up months' worth of photos before processing them, it's unlikely you'll add more than 5-10 minutes at most.
JPGs have less dynamic range than old school negative film. There are scenes that literally can't be accurately captured in JPG, but can in RAW. You could trust your camera's JPEG algorithm, but then again, you could trust your phone's computational photography too. If you're serious enough to own a dedicated interchangeable-lens camera in the year2025, you probably care enough to want the extra flexibility.
You say:
But that's the opposite of what RAW does! RAW gives you more slack when it comes to technical choices like exposure and color balance, which means you can focus more on artistic choices like composition. If you want to override your JPG's default settings, you will suffer a loss in image quality. A RAW file is way more flexible. It allows you to focus on the things that you must get right in the moment, like the exact camera angle and the exact moment of pressing the shutter, while things like color balance and exposure have more leeway to be modified in post. Meanwhile, you can also just let Photoshop or Lightroom do their thing and not worry about it, for the cost of 5-10 seconds extra processing time per image.
Post-processing isn't something you should be thinking about in the moment of taking a photo, unless it's a very special scenario in which you plan to use certain post processing techniques to achieve a certain effect that can't otherwise be achieved (e.g. multi-shot panorama or HDR). And contrary to what you said, RAW actually allows you to think less about post processing in the moment of making the photo, because you have more freedom to change things (or not change things) in post, versus "locking in" a JPG.
Another benefit is time: modern software can do amazing things with old RAW files that neither camera hardware at the time of capture, nor modern software operating on old JPGs can.
I'm not the kind of photographer to frequently make extensive edits in post. I prefer to do most things that can be done in camera, in camera, and have a lot of experience with analog photography. But I still shoot RAW all the time.
Strongly disagree about broadly saying not to shoot RAW. While in many cases it is unnecessary, it is certainly going to produce better results if you have to edit an image when starting there compared to JPG. I have a really weird camera with a proprietary RAW format that has no real FOSS support, but it still only takes me less than five minutes per image to adjust the exposure and export as TIFF in the proprietary software then edit in Darktable.
A better option than to not shoot RAW, is shoot both RAW and JPG. For most pictures, you can use the JPGs, but for the really nice shots, you can edit the RAW and make it much better.
Raws are a family of file format (there's usually one per brand - Fuji have .raf, Sony have .arw, Canon have .cr2, Nikon have .nef) that records the "raw" data from the sensor. It's often in the tens of MB, whereas for picture you'll share on social media is often in the order of 0.5MB in jpeg.
There's some special dedicated program that does that, but it's an art (your camera captures more data that your screen can render, so you have to make choice). Almost all camera can also outputs regular jpeg (Fujifilm is famous for its jpg processing that try to closely mimic their analogue film stock colors), but you lose all the editing range that you have with raws (it's way easier to rescue a badly exposed photo with raws compared to jpeg).
Often those program also have photo sorting and culling capabilities (pro photographer often have to manage hundred of even thousands photos per session, so relying on your OS is highly inefficient). Those can also be quite expensive and/or subscription based.
I personally got a perpetual license for Capture One in 2023 for a hundred bucks (lucky promotion) but normaly it's 300. Adobe Lightroom is a very popular choice, but Adobe has discutable business practices and my Pro photographer friends (corporate portraiture) hates it's color rendering.
Some free and open source alternative exists, but it's been a while since I try them. Raw therapee seems competent. Dark Table works in a wholly different paradigm than every other raw developper in the market ; it's very destabilising with my decade of Lightroom and Capture One experience.
Other people already replied, but whatever, you asked me so I'm going to give you my opinion as well. I completely disagree with the "Don't shoot RAW" article, on the contrary as an amateur shooting RAWs and learning the depth of what I can create using it is what made photography fun for me. But I mainly shoot landscapes which rely more on postprocessing, for your purpose it's less necessary.
Basically with digital cameras RAW is the default, and jpeg mode tries to "develop" the raws automatically. Modern cameras do that really well. "Developing" a RAW is necessary because by default, in the data you get straight from the image sensor, there's no reference of what neutral white is, the difference between the darkest tones and the lightest tones is higher than what a display (or a printed photo) can show, so it needs to be squashed using various algorithms, some mathemagic is being done with colors etc. So an actual viewable image must be created using software, either automatically using a processing chip in the camera, or semi automatically using a computer program that you can influence.
All cameras can save both jpegs and RAWs at the same time, so you can decide to only do some post work on one or a few select photos and the rest leave as jpegs that are likely going to be good enough.
The most popular program for that is Adobe Lightroom, and as much as I dislike Adobe I think it's rather good. Other options exist, I like DxO, and Affinity Photo is not bad these days either (it's a full fledged Photoshop alternative that can also develop RAWs, though not to the very maximum of their potential like say DxO).
Usually when you just load the RAW photo into an application like Lightroom you get something that looks similar to what you would get as a jpeg straight out of camera, but you can decide to tweak it and significantly change it, with much more freedom than you get from a jpeg. The downside is that until you get skilled at it, it can take a lot of time to do this even for just a few pictures.
Personally I wouldn't recommend the open source variants, Darktable and Rawtherapee, to a layman unless you enjoy learning complicated technical things - they're powerful but needlessly complicated with bad interfaces imo. I like Filmulator, which is also free and it simulates film-style photography, but I'm not sure how well supported it is, it hasn't received an update in several years. It's different from other apps in how it works, so reading the manual is required, but it's relatively short and the overall concept is quite simple.
I wish that some of the open source raw processing projects would just clone Lightroom's UI. Those years of habit are hard to break.
Just today I discovered RapidRAW. I haven't tested it yet, but supposedly it's great and inspired by Lightroom.
Ooh, intriguing! Thanks for the link.
yay for film cameras •⩊•
When you say “analog camera” do you still mean film? I haven’t heard anyone use this phrasing before, and am just curious enough to clarify!