Fifteen years of cameras

Jim Fisher has reviewed cameras at PCMag for 15 years and shot countless frames along the way. The tips come from that mileage and those mistakes, not from a spec sheet.

There is always room to grow

First camera or years of snapshots, it makes no difference. Technique keeps improving, and the newest gear pays off most for people who keep learning.

“there's always room to learn and grow as a creator”

Start by learning Raw

Tip one, and the base the rest sits on: get comfortable with Raw files instead of accepting whatever the camera hands you.

Your camera ships in JPG

Out of the box, digital cameras record 8-bit JPGs. Convenient, and that one default quietly settles how your photo looks before you ever see it.

The camera develops for you

A JPG arrives already processed from the sensor by the camera's own engine. Those decisions are baked in, so exposure and color balance barely move afterward.

“These pictures are "developed" from the sensor by your camera's image processor and leave little headroom to adjust exposure or color balance.”

Lossy from the start

JPGs also carry noise reduction and compression that discard data for good. You cannot recover detail the file never kept.

“They also suffer from lossy noise reduction and compression.”

Raw is nearly everywhere

Almost every interchangeable lens camera and plenty of advanced compacts shoot Raw, sampling color at 12-bit or 14-bit instead of 8.

Rescue a backlit shot

That extra data lets you lift the shadows on a face you shot against a bright window and end up with a usable photo instead of a silhouette.

“The extra data lets you open shadows to save poorly exposed backlit shots”

Grade color without the cost

A Raw file takes an artistic color grade with no loss of picture quality. Push it warm, flatten the contrast, and the image still holds together.

Raw is not ready to share

Straight off the card, these files are not meant for posting. Processing them becomes your job, which is the price of the extra control.

“Raw photos aren't meant to be shared right out of the camera”

Before and after, in Lightroom

In Lightroom Classic, the untouched shot of the plane looks flat beside the same file edited to taste. One capture, two very different photographs.

Free software gets you started

Microsoft Photos on a PC and Apple Photos on a Mac both handle the basics. Learn what the sliders actually do there before you spend anything.

Upgrade when you want more

If the creative freedom hooks you, step up to a full workflow app: Adobe Lightroom, Capture One, or Skylum Luminar.

How the processors score

PCMag rates Lightroom Classic a perfect 5.0, standard Lightroom 4.5, and DxO PhotoLab, Capture One, and Luminar Neo at 4.0. Capture One Pro runs about $17 a month.