Ready to have a bash at RAW processing!

[Sutton Warrior]

I am inclined to agree. I got a Cannon 400D last year, my first digital SLR, & have been having a go processing RAW files lately using the software which came with the camera,Photo Professional it's called.

All I seem to end up doing to the RAW files most of the time is tweaking the brightness & contrast if needed which you can do in any basic software with jpegs. Sometimes I play around with the white balance etc, on photos that were probably quite acceptable any way.

I find even PS Elements I don't use half it's capability. I am far from being an expert, but to me photographs are about capturing the moment & I try to rely on the settings on the actual camera to get the picture I want. A lot of times it's the composure that makes a good photo.

 

" . . . I was much happier in the days of 6mp's!!!! wow . . . and 'Adobe Photodelux' (hold your hand fore runner of Elements)."

 

Hay, a man who understands where 'I'm coming from'. RAW and manipulation seems, so often, to be for the 'artistic birds', I'm not into fiddling a £arting about. Nature and the moment does it for me, just need a little adjustment when the camera . . . mmmm; OK, when I get the settings wrong. All this messing about to get a picture that you did not take . . . not for me.

 

The point with RAW is the zero loss factor, regardless of how many changes you make (which has never been convincingly demonstrated to me in practical terms) . . . the jury is still out, but RAW as a virgin archive special picture store seems to be a good idea, stored on an external hard drive. Large capacity drives are very cheap these days, I have a Matrox 500gb cost £65, I think one double that capacity can now be had at a similar figure? Its then a question, will you ever need the pictures in the archive . . . ?

 

SW

Edited February 28, 2009 by Sutton Warrior

[Rich_]

Without hopefully straying too far from the original thread,your last question raises another point. In the days of 35mm film I was very choosy which photos went in the album after I got them back from Boots's , because albums took up drawer space. Small hard drives were the electronic equivalent of this drawer. However, since the advent of CD writers & flash drives etc I now have hundreds of pictures going back over about 8 years, most of which I will never print off, or even look at again.

[poledark]

I go through my picture folders about once a month (when I am bored) and delete loads every time I often look at some and wonder why I kept them in the first place. Same for videos, great fun to spend a day out and film loads of stuff, but why keep it? For me, most of the fun is in the capturing.

 

 

Den

 

PS, I also have a clearout on photobucket quite often.

[Snatcher]

Looks like I may be stuck in the Pre Raw Cambrian Period then

 

Unless someone can sort me out in Noeolithic terms I shall wait for the wheel to be diccovered.

 

"Publish and be dammed," I shall pull the rocks over my JPEG cave now"

 

:bigemo_harabe_net-163: