A lot of us are quite familiar with the capabilities of the Apple iPhone series. Technologically, so far, the Apple phones are a cut above most of their competitors in the phone market. The iPhone 12 series: iPhone 12, iPhone 12 Pro, and the iPhone 12 Pro Max hit the market with features that made a lot of people dream.

In fact, in my part of the world, to have an iPhone, especially the 12 series, almost afforded one celebrity status. The cost of buying one, in some cases, could get you a good ‘Second hand’ (used) car or even a piece of landed property in some not too far-off places.

But, unfortunately, whereas their counterparts have since realized that the iPhone is a tool for achieving a lot more things than just making calls, snapping pictures, and posting messages on social platforms, most of them from these parts only ‘have it, to flaunt it.

The iPhone 12 Pro has a lot of features and specs that make it more of a tool than a fashion accessory. For instance, the phone jumps from 8- to 10‑bit HDR recording, capturing 700 million colors for much more lifelike video. Even better, it records in Dolby Vision — the format used by film studios; and you can even edit Dolby Vision video and use AirPlay to see every last bit of the difference on the big screen.

With a bit of research into photography, you are likely to find recommendations from photographers and photography websites on the benefits of using “RAW” in your shooting. But what is RAW in photography and why is it being highly recommended by photographers? 

A RAW file is simply a digital image file that is stored on your camera or smartphone's memory card. It is minimally processed and is usually uncompressed. A camera raw image file contains minimally processed data from the image sensor of, either a digital camera, a motion picture film scanner, or another image scanner. Raw files are named so because they are not yet processed and therefore are not ready to be printed or edited with a bitmap graphics editor.

Shooting RAW ensures you are capturing as many colors in an image as possible, creating photos with a higher color range and color depth. This is why a brightly colored landscape or a vibrant fashion scene with a range of shades and tones will likely turn out better if you shoot in RAW vs. JPEG.

Every camera manufacturer has its RAW file format, for example, Canon RAW files are.CR2 or.CR3, whilst Nikon are.NEF. When it comes to smartphones, most Android smartphones which support RAW primarily shoot in DNG, which is a universal RAW file format, while Apple has a new ProRAW format.

With the Apple iPhone 12 Pro, Apple focused on using a wider aperture along with a higher quality lens to improve the image quality on its phones instead of using bigger sensors. In addition to image processing improvements, the iPhone 12 series can capture very impressive photos. But shooting in RAW gives you more control over the final pictures. But how do you achieve this shooting RAW on iPhone?

The default iOS 14 camera app does not support shooting photos on RAW/DNG. To open a RAW file, you need viewing software that specifically supports the RAW file produced by your camera. It may therefore be better to use a third-party app. Usually, your camera or smartphone will come with a RAW file viewer and editor, and many popular image file viewers also support various RAW files, although support varies based on your camera manufacturer and model. You can use any third-party camera app from the App Store to shoot RAW/DNG photos on your iPhone 12 Pro.

In conclusion, there are a couple of advantages or so of shooting RAW on your iPhone 12Pro. This includes:

(a)   It allows you to keep all of your image data thereby preventing the loss of valuable image data.

(b)  It allows you to make White balance adjustments. White balance refers to the color tone of the image. Unlike shooting in JPEG, where the camera has to try and adjust to its white balance and apply it to the image; shooting RAW, you can easily change the white balance after the shoot making it much easier to adjust the tone of the image in post-production.

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