It’s been a while since Nokia’s release of sample RAW files from a Lumia 1020, the smartphone with a whopping 41-megapixel camera. The files were released in late October 2013 so they’re pretty much old news now. But, with Adobe’s recent leak of Lightroom for iPad, I thought it’d be a good opportunity to finally publish this post that’s been sitting in my list of drafts. The capability of shooting in RAW has been restricted to most DSLRs and some point-and-shoots for the most part. This year, I’m sure we’ll see more smartphones with this capability.
For those of you unfamiliar with RAW files, they are to digital photography what undeveloped film is to traditional/analog photography — a digital negative. Unlike a JPEG, which is essentially the camera doing the post-processing for you, RAW files allow you to process photos your way. Feel free to comment if you have any experience developing film and any techniques you may have used, I’d like to know.
Below, I’ve taken one of the samples, reduced the highlights, brought back some detail in the shadows, added some saturation, increased the sharpness, and reduced the noise.
Unedited
Edited with Lightroom 4
If you’d like to experiment with the files, grab them here. You can edit RAW files with free software like Picasa.
Agile Prototype 