RAW Critique

[Kayaker72]

Do you not use DPP that was provided with your camera?

+1

DPP was my original RAW converter and is available for free from Canon. As Rick said, it should have been provided on one of the disks with your camera or you can download it from Canon USA. I am pretty sure there are several forum members that still use it.

BTW.....I "think" I see a difference, but it is hard without doing a side by side comparison and some of the details would be difficult to tell in files compressed to 1,000 pixels wide. Here is a comparison at 100% of a RAW processed photo vs jpeg straight out of the camera under the same conditions.

Its been years since I did a side by side comparison, but I do recall thinking that the RAW files were also a bit better straight out of the camera compared to jpg. But to me, the real benefit of shooting RAW is that their is more information available to you for each photo which gives you more latitude in post processing. For example, you get better results bringing up shadows, better control at adding color saturation or in changes to tone.

I'll have to look, but I also recall that jpeg is more limited in things like DR, etc, compared to RAW.
EDIT---I did find this on dpreview for the 7D and also reference that jpegs are 8 bit files. Here is a Canon write up when they went from 12 bit to 14 bit. Bottom line is with RAW you have a lot more information to work with ~4,000 shades of gray (assuming ~12 stop DR and not 14) vs 256 (jpeg).

[HDNitehawk]

Its been years since I did a side by side comparison, but I do recall thinking that the RAW files were also a bit better straight out of the camera compared to jpg.

I did the comparison when I bought the 7D II. For the last year I have been shooting RAW + JPG because of all the wasted time converting average family pictures for such a small benefit. Properly exposed, decent ISO with the right WB the amount of improvement you can get is really minimal. This was less so with the older bodies like the 7D and 5D II. Both of those bodies had more head room for pp than the new models. I think Canon's firmware has gotten better and we get better files out of the camera because of it.