ALL Image File are born in RAW

When I think about it, I conclude that ALL digital images, even those
from the most rudimentary, entry level digicam, must start out life as a
raw file. I mean.....What else could it be? A bunch of 0s and 1s
right from the sensor.
To make the raw data useful to the average photographer, the camera had
to do some serious processing to store and output the data as a jpeg or
tiff file. As demand for better access to the unprocessed data increased
camera manufacturers ALLOWED the user to download this minimally
processed data as RAW.
I suspect that in the "early days" it was just a matter of jpeg being
"good enough" and it saved valuable and scarce memory space which was at
a real premium in those days. I remember that in 2000, a 512 MB Micro
drive cost about $250.
Bob Williams

Bob Williams wrote:
When I think about it, I conclude that ALL digital images, even those
from the most rudimentary, entry level digicam, must start out life as a
raw file. I mean.....What else could it be? A bunch of 0s and 1s
right from the sensor.

You have the right idea. But, it is "raw data", not a
raw file. It may or may not ever be put into a file...

To make the raw data useful to the average photographer, the camera had
to do some serious processing to store and output the data as a jpeg or
tiff file. As demand for better access to the unprocessed data increased
camera manufacturers ALLOWED the user to download this minimally
processed data as RAW.

The other way around. Initially the cpu in the camera
didn't have enough power to do fancy conversions, so the
raw data was all that was available from the camera.
Then when more compute power became available it was
used to generate "finished" images (and for some
consumer cameras the raw data was no longer made
available).

I suspect that in the "early days" it was just a matter of jpeg being
"good enough" and it saved valuable and scarce memory space which was at
a real premium in those days. I remember that in 2000, a 512 MB Micro
drive cost about $250.

It certainly made one think about how many to buy!

But, the Nikon D1 price was $5000, and the RAW files
were much smaller than of raw files from a Nikon D3
today.

--
Floyd L. Davidson http://www.apaflo.com/floyd_davidson
Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska)

Bob Williams wrote:
When I think about it, I conclude that ALL digital images, even those
from the most rudimentary, entry level digicam, must start out life as a
raw file.

Well, that depends on your definition of file. It is a sequence of raw
data. On UNIXoid operating systems pretty much any data is considered a
file, even a keyboard or a USB interface or computer performance
statistics. In that sense yes, it is a file.
If you are using a more conservative meaning of file like data that is
stored in a file system on a storage device, then no, it is not a file,
because the data will be converted into e.g. a JPEG on the fly before
being written to the storage media.

jue

Bob Williams wrote:
When I think about it, I conclude that ALL digital images, even those
from the most rudimentary, entry level digicam, must start out life
as a raw file. I mean.....What else could it be? A bunch of 0s and
1s right from the sensor.

... perhaps it is actually a flow of photo-electrons, captured in a
somewhat noisy way by the read amplifier?

David

David J Taylor wrote:
Bob Williams wrote:
When I think about it, I conclude that ALL digital images, even those
from the most rudimentary, entry level digicam, must start out life
as a raw file. I mean.....What else could it be? A bunch of 0s and
1s right from the sensor.

.. perhaps it is actually a flow of photo-electrons, captured in a
somewhat noisy way by the read amplifier?

David
Yes! That's right.
Bob

Bob Williams wrote:
When I think about it, I conclude that ALL digital images, even those
from the most rudimentary, entry level digicam, must start out life as a
raw file. I mean.....What else could it be? A bunch of 0s and 1s
right from the sensor.
To make the raw data useful to the average photographer, the camera had
to do some serious processing to store and output the data as a jpeg or
tiff file. As demand for better access to the unprocessed data increased
camera manufacturers ALLOWED the user to download this minimally
processed data as RAW.
I suspect that in the "early days" it was just a matter of jpeg being
"good enough" and it saved valuable and scarce memory space which was at
a real premium in those days. I remember that in 2000, a 512 MB Micro
drive cost about $250.
Bob Williams





I disagree. This would be true only if RAW files had no processing
whatsoever, were just a matrix of original electron data in an array.
But most camera RAW files DO have some sort of processing. Many have
already done the color allocation, some have some compression. What is
done to the data depends on the camera and the model. If this were not
so, you would not need the RAW conversion software, you could dump it to
the screen with a very simple universal program.