SECRET SQUIRREL...

[Janet]

I have to say that after a bit of footling on the PC tonight I DID manage to rescue the Jpeg to acceptable levels....however, it took rather a lot longer than the few minutes I spent tweaking the RAW image....Pah! I was supposed to have been working on the ironing mountain!

 

I'm rather confused now! I took one very poor shot, but was able to rescue it in both RAW and Jpeg....

 

I'm still not sure which format is best for me...?

 

Perhaps it's just down to me and my technical know-how (or rather, the lack of it...!) I'd still prefer to get it right first time, but on occasions like this, I'm glad to have the technology to recover at least something from the day!

 

Janet

[RobStubbs]

I've borrowed some info on RAW v JPEG from the following 'outdoor photographer' site

 

The following from it is a nice summary "JPEG is an image format, RAW is not. RAW is nothing else than a collection of data. The sensor in your camera captures everything it sees and stores it away as RAW, if you decide to use JPEG, the processors throws away everything IT decides is useless including details on shadows and highlights (the +- 2 f/stops gain in RAW is one of the advantages of RAW that you often hear about). There's a lot more than that. RAW is like a negative, you need to process it. JPEG is like the final print. You bring a negative to a photo store and they'll make prints, bring that same negative to 10 different stores and you are likely to see 10 different results because every store uses its own settings. If you use JPEG the processor in your camera will correct light, hue, saturation, etc. based on what it was told when it came out of the manufacturing plant and throw away FOREVER everything else."

 

So I read that as a JPEG is a compressed file format, and that the camera does the compression on it's predefined algorithm. RAW is in effect similar to a digital radio or TV signal. It's a series of data that can be modified or tweaked as you see fit. You can then compress it to a JPEG when you've got it looking as you want to.

 

I'm guessing perhaps older camera's use 8-bit RAW whereas newer (and/or) more expensive ones use 16-bit ???

 

Rob.

 

<edit> and another good description here

Edited November 24, 2009 by RobStubbs