Sony Xperia 1 II update brings RAW photo support, July patch

Damien Wilde | Jul 28 2020 - 5:17 am PT

For the pro camera enthusiast, you’ll be pleased to hear that the Sony Xperia 1 II is now gaining RAW photo capture support courtesy of its latest update.

According to posts over on the /r/SonyXperia subreddit, the latest 58.0.A.3.88 is now rolling out with the July 2020 security patch and support for capturing RAW photos with all lenses on the impressive triple camera setup.

If you were unaware, RAW photos contain far more information than a comparable JPEG image. They might look the same through your viewfinder or in image galleries — save needing to open in a specific application — but they offer far more in the way of flexibility if you want to tweak or edit them with post-processing effects.

RAW photos are larger and have far less compression, which means that you can make tweaks. A JPEG is usually the final image exported after processing and happens to be a “lossy” format. For photo enthusiasts that like spending time in Lightroom or similar photo-editing software, shooting in RAW is a must.

The new option is available when you fire up the Sony Xperia 1 II’s Photo Pro mode, with a toggle allowing you to set RAW to be enabled. However, there are some notables that come with the larger .DNG file format. Firstly, you will use more storage and secondly, images will be saved in a 4:3 aspect ratio to your Xperia 1 II’s internal storage.

You should see the 58.0.A.3.88 update rolling out right now if you do have the Sony Xperia 1 II, allowing you to get some of that sweet RAW photo mode action.