The following was written by special guest writer Wayne Beaumont.

Virtually all digital SLRs available today are able to output in RAW format. This also extends to many manufacturers’ high end or enthusiast level point and shoot cameras. I was recently given a Canon G9 which falls into the enthusiast category and provides the option of outputting its files in RAW format.

I consider myself to be a casual photographer, taking more than what I would consider snapshots but certainly falling short of fine art photography. Being recently introduced to a camera with RAW capability, I started looking into the pros and cons of this format.

The pros include the ability to adjust camera parameters such as white balance, sharpness, noise reduction , and exposure (to some degree) using computer software, allowing these to be adjusted to suit your own taste and possibly correcting errors in the original photo.

The cons are related primarily to camera performance. RAW files tend to be large. Canon G9 RAW files typically exceed 12MB. As a result, shot-to-shot performance on the G9 suffers and the number of files you can put on a memory card is drastically reduced. With today’s multi-GB SDHC cards, this is not of too much concern since cards holding 4GB and up are available at reasonable cost. The G9 also allows you to take both JPG and RAW files at the same time. I find this to be a great option since I can use the camera JPG as a reference when processing the RAW file.

For point and shoot cameras, RAW provides a level of image quality that often is not attainable from JPGs. This is particularly true when using the camera in less than ideal lighting conditions. Modern point and shoot cameras typically stuff a lot of pixels on a small sensor. The result is highly detailed pictures when taken in bright light, but as the light drops, the small pixels' limited light gathering capability results in pictures containing a lot of noise, usually appearing as colored speckles throughout the picture, particularly in shadow areas. Camera manufacturers combat this by applying in-camera noise reduction which effectively reduces the visible noise but often leaves details that are smeared. In extreme cases, the photo can take on an almost watercolor appearance. Since RAW files contain all the information provided by the camera’s sensor, you can make the decision regarding how to apply processing after the fact. You can decide how much noise reduction you are willing to apply and balance this against lost detail.