But I guess you know better than me. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
So, fro example, Nikon typically provides three options for Raw: Compressed, Lossless Compressed and Uncompressed, as seen below:
https://photographylife.com/cdn-cgi/imagedelivery/GrQZt6ZFhE...
"Lossless Compressed means that a Raw file is compressed like an ZIP archive file without any loss of data. Once a losslessly compressed image is processed by post-processing software, the data is first decompressed, and you work with the data as if there had never been any compression at all. Lossless compression is the ideal choice, because all the data is fully preserved and yet the image takes up much less space.
Uncompressed – an uncompressed Raw file contains all the data, but without any sort of compression algorithm applied to it. Unless you do not have the Lossless Compressed option, you should always avoid selecting the Uncompressed option, as it results in huge image sizes."
Why make the distinction if there is no difference?
Apple is COMPRESSING the image. Period. RAW photos can be compressed, but if they are then they are "RAW Compressed" Files, not "RAW" files.Apple is not saying you are shooting RAW Compressed, it says you are shooting ProRAW photos, which is slick marketing because everyone thinks they are shooting RAW photos but ProRAW is not RAW. The iPhone 12 gave you a choice to shoot RAW or ProRAW, but my iPhone 13 ProMax only allows the ProRAW option. I have no option to avoid Apple processing my photos anymore.
It is semantics but words matter. If something is off with the compression algorithm or the processing how would you know?
More, if the difference did not matter, why does Sony go out of the way to explain the difference?
https://www.sony.com/electronics/support/articles/00257081
If a computer compresses and expands the image using an algorithm you are not getting back the same image. Period. I do not care if you perceive it to be the same, it is not the same.
There is a difference, which is that the compressed lossless version is smaller and requires some amount of processing time to actually be compressed or uncompressed. But there is zero difference in the raw camera data. After decompression, it is identical.
> If a computer compresses and expands the image using an algorithm you are not getting back the same image. Period. I do not care if you perceive it to be the same, it is not the same.
It is the same. You can check each and every bit one by one, and they will all be identical.
If you copy a Van Gogh is it worth the same as the original?
If you copy the number written on a piece of paper to another piece of paper, is it the same number? Yes, it is, and a digital photograph is defined by the numbers that make it up. Once you have two identical copies of a file, what difference does it make which one you read the numbers from?
Or are you arguing that when the camera writes those numbers to the raw file, it’s already a different image than was read from the sensor? After all, they were in volatile memory before a copy was written to the SD card.