What are the basic low level steps involved in raw file conversion? In this article I will discuss what happens under the hood of digital camera raw converters in order to turn raw file data into a viewable image, a process sometimes referred to as ‘rendering’. We will use the following raw capture by a Nikon D610 to show how image information is transformed at every step along the way:
Determining the Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) curves of your digital camera at various ISOs and extracting from them the underlying IQ metrics of its sensor can help answer a number of questions useful to photography. For instance whether/when to raise ISO; what its dynamic range is; how noisy its output could be in various conditions; or how well it is likely to perform compared to other Digital Still Cameras. As it turns out obtaining the relative data is a little time consuming but not that hard. All you need is your camera, a suitable target, a neutral density filter, dcraw or libraw or similar software to access the linear raw data – and a spreadsheet.
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