It's a form of photographic file that displays all the content as captured by the sensor with no missing information caused by conversion or compression.

Although it has all the camera information about how much sharpening and colour saturation was added by the user during the time of capture. The files allows all parameters to be readjusted after the file was taken. That information can then be stored along with the original profile. Any editing is not destructive and can be retrieved at any time. The downside is it can not be used as a display format on the net. It can be directly printed from though. For electronic sharing it is normal to save it as a jpg with an srgb profile.

RAW files by their nature are often much larger in file size than their jpg counterparts.

People often think of them and refer to them as digital negatives because of this but in fact they are not negatives in the true photographic meaning of the term but an unprocessed image that can be for the uninitiated, hard to adjust to look better than the camera's own jpg version .

Hello Chris

I saw your comment on my photoblog re: RAW.  I think that these two members have answered it far better than I could.  Say no more!!! Lol  Thanks for popping by my photoblog and I hope you understand what RAW is now.

Cheers

Your camera does not support RAW file formats only jpg.

I looked up the complete set of specifications for your camera when I answered your thread question.

No it refers to whether or not the original is saved after you have  used the cameras red eye removal feature.

Explained on pages  91 and 100 of your pdf manual.