Nikon is a great camera. It creates pictures in its native RAW format called NEF files . It will also capture a JPEG at the same time. So, it’s a great camera able to produce great photos, but how many people really know all its advantages and can really use them? Right, not too many. There exists the misconception that in order to make good photographs, you don’t need skill, just good gear. In fact, the opposite is true. Though an expensive camera is nice to own and a pleasure to use, it is not necessary for taking quality pictures. The most important things that you need are a good eye, practice and knowledge of photography basics. Before buying the camera that offers an opportunity to shoot in RAW you should learn a lot about photography. Camera RAW files are unprocessed, meaning all the photo processing will have to be done on the computer. It is like taking a film negative to a dark room to be developed. The RAW file is the negative and the computer serves as the dark room. With a RAW file, you have complete control over the temperature adjustments (for white-balance), tint, hue, and exposure. Lots of work, especially for beginners. More than that, each camera manufacturer likes to produce their own proprietary types of RAW files. For instance, NEF files come from Nikon cameras. If you want to print the file, the NEF file has a very high quality. The NEF file has 100 percent of the luminance information captured by the camera and is an uncompressed image. But when you want to upload your NEF files onto Facebook, you need to know that your files have to be converted to JPEG. Same has to be done when images need to be emailed or uploaded to your Picasa albums.