Contemporary Canon photography involves two separate stages. One is the RAW image you save to your memory card, and the other is the post-processing, where you fine-tune your capture to reflect the vision or mood you want to express. It’s all too easy to think that you can do everything in the second stage, especially with the flexibility that editing RAW images gives you. But this isn’t the case, as there are certain fundamentals that you must get right in-camera. These are the elements that cannot be rescued or fixed, no matter how good your post-processing skills in Photoshop may be.
It’s true that the RAW format presents you with a plethora of floating values – all of which can be shaped to align with your creative ideas for the finished photo. However, certain photographic settings have to be nailed down at the capture stage because they simply can’t be changed.
And these are the aspects we’ll be looking at in detail over the following pages. If you get these right in-camera, then the standard of your images can only improve.
PRO ADVICE
1 USE THE RIGHT FILE FORMAT IN CAMERA
With today’s Canon EOS DSLRs and mirrorless cameras, there are basically two choices of file format: JPEG or RAW – or both at once! If you want the best quality shots, then RAW (Canon’s. CR2 and. CR3 files) is the default option, as it gives the ultimate flexibility for producing the highest image quality. This is because a RAW file has a broad range of ‘floating values’, which can be adjusted in software after the shot has been taken. These include the contrast, colour, sharpening and even the exposure itself.
With a JPEG, all these values are fixed in the file, and although it is possible to
