[ashman5]

While I agree, I speculate that Apple doesn't allow this simply for iCloud Photo Library backup aspects. The HEIC/HEVC save backup space. Backing up RAW/DNG would be data costly. I realize there are ways around this, but it's not Apple's style.

[snuxoll]

There are apps like ProCam that take RAW images and save them to the camera roll, they sync over iCloud Photo Library without issue. I think the normal user is just fine with JPEG or HEIF and the space savings are more important, so Apple has kept it out of Camera.app.

[spike021]

I'm not sure why they couldn't, though. They provide several different format options for recording video, like 1080p vs 4K.

[snuxoll]

Yeah, but at the end of the day the different video settings still use "standard" formats that a normal consumer can open on their desktop or laptop. HEIF being the real outlier, changing any of the settings buried in Settings.app for the built-in Camera.app doesn't effect the ability of a normal user to view their content on a current operating system (Windows 10 or macOS High Sierra). RAW images change all of that - Windows 10 has really basic support for some RAW formats, and there are some workarounds like RAW+JPEG in ProCam but it results in two separate files combined as one "image" in your iCloud Photo library, syncing this to a Windows PC results in two files and just confuses users (macOS works around this by hiding everything in the Photo Library, invisible to most users).