Files & formats
RAW versus JPEG and HEIF, when RAW actually matters for a learner, and the card and battery practicalities.
- Choose between RAW, JPEG, and HEIF for a given purpose
- Explain when RAW's extra latitude is worth its cost while learning
- Handle cards and batteries so a shoot never stops for the wrong reason
The file you save decides how much room you have to fix and finish a picture later. The choice is simpler than the acronyms suggest.
RAW keeps the negative
A RAW file is the sensor’s data before the camera makes decisions about it — before white balance, contrast, and sharpening are baked in. That means enormous latitude later: you can recover a blown sky, rescue shadows, and reset white balance as if you had chosen it at capture. The a6700 offers compressed and lossless-compressed RAW; either is fine, with lossless giving you the most data for a larger file.
JPEG and HEIF are finished
A JPEG is a photograph the camera has already developed and sealed. It looks good immediately and takes little space, but the decisions are permanent — push it hard in editing and it falls apart. HEIF is a more modern, efficient version of the same idea, with smoother gradients, though it is less universally supported.
When RAW matters while learning
Shoot RAW + JPEG for now. The JPEG gives you something to look at and share straight away; the RAW is your safety net while your exposure and white balance are still finding their feet. RAW earns its keep exactly when you are learning, because you will make recoverable mistakes — and recovering them is itself a lesson. As your exposures tighten, you may keep only RAW, or switch to JPEG for casual days.
Cards and batteries
Two practicalities keep a shoot alive:
- The a6700 has a single SD card slot that supports fast UHS-II cards. One fast, reliable card beats two slow ones — buy a reputable brand and carry a spare. RAW + JPEG fills space quicker, so size accordingly.
- Power comes from the larger NP-FZ100 battery, which lasts well but not forever, especially in cold or when shooting video. Carry at least one spare and top up over USB-C between sessions.
In the field
Photograph a high-contrast scene — a bright window in a dim room — in RAW + JPEG. Open both. Try to recover the window detail in each. The gap between what the RAW gives back and what the JPEG cannot is the whole argument, shown in one frame.