SanDisk promises a RAW deal

By Clement James on Sep 5, 2006 9:54 AM
Filed under Hardware

Partnership with Phase One to push benefits of image format.

Digital imaging firm Phase One has teamed up with Flash storage card manufacturer SanDisk to push the benefits to photographers of shooting in RAW format.

All SanDisk Extreme III CompactFlash cards now include a full free edition of Phase One's Capture One LE RAW Workflow software.

The product will enable photographers that shoot in JPEG to easily start working in RAW. Extreme III users who already shoot RAW images can now process their images using the Capture One software at no additional charge.

Drew Gardner, a specialist in location photography, said of the partnership: " This move by Phase One and SanDisk is very important to encourage more photographers to experience the benefits of shooting in RAW.

"I cannot overstate how important RAW is to my photography. It gives me the edge over digital photographers who shoot in any other way because RAW gives me such a degree of control and produces images of incredible quality."

A RAW file contains the original unprocessed data from a camera's image sensor. Unlike shooting in JPEG, where camera settings are recorded and fixed at the time of capture, shooting in RAW enables photographers to make post-capture changes to exposure settings.

These include linearity, matrix processing, white point, colour balance, sharpness, contrast, brightness, colour space and saturation.