I am RAW retard...help!?

[JustAnotherGinger]

I want to get better quality images from my camera, however being a newbie, I still haven't grasped the whole concept of RAW shooting. I was wondering if anyone could recommend a book, a class, a mentor...I would love to learn, just need the right person/book, that doesn't make it difficult.

[texkam]

YouTube is your friend.

[rockpics]

All you need to edit raw is a program that'll do it. Since you shoot Canon, you have one that came with your camera, Digital Photo Professional, and it gives good results too.
Editing raw is not harder than editing JPG. Those that say otherwise are full of it.

[venchka]

Originally Posted by rockpics

All you need to edit raw is a program that'll do it. Since you shoot Canon, you have one that came with your camera, Digital Photo Professional, and it gives good results too.
Editing raw is not harder than editing JPG. Those that say otherwise are full of it.

Right on Jill. In fact, trying to make an in camera JPEG look decent is harder than working with RAW files. If you do your job right before you make an exposure, a good RAW file needs no work at all.
RAW files are for photographs. JPEGs are for the Interweb.

[venchka]

Here is an example of what I mean by get it right in the camera and a RAW file doesn't need any software "help".

http://www.texasphotoforum.com/forum...ster-iris.html

[JustAnotherGinger]

Okay! Thank you so much!

[kenw]

A very simple intro to RAW is Picasa. Picasa is free (from Google, the Great Satan) and it renders (converts) RAWs to JPG quite well. The nice part is that you can take a RAW and see how it renders a RAW, then take a comparable JPG and see what you can do with it. You will be surprised how much more even a basic editor like Picasa can do with a RAW over what it can do with a JPG. Then you can imagine how much more YOU can do with a RAW file and a real editor....

Now you'll want to use something other than Picasa to do real editing with obviously, but Picasa lets you see the difference without mastering a more complex editor 1st.

As an example I had taken a bunch of portraits at church recently and was extremely disappointed in how they looked, at least in the LCD on the camera. major blowouts, harsh lighting, etc. (i'm NOT a portrait shooter!!). However, those same exact shots rendered in Picasa were so good that I simply used the results that Picasa gave me (Picasa will save any RAW as a JPG) without any further futzing.

[venchka]

I hate futzing.
Help stamp out futzing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[JustAnotherGinger]

I took these two images today, using the same settings. One is JPG, Two is RAW...I can see the difference...the best thing is, both images are unedited, and it seems the RAW just turned out better.

[kenw]

well, there ya go...

[venchka]

Good work. RAW files SHOULD look better than a JPEG.
The whole JPEG file format thing came about to make Al Gore's internet work when everybody had dial up connections. We are forced to view photos on the interweb in JPEG format. Too bad we can't view the originals.

[JustAnotherGinger]

I agree! For one, we won't have to have ten different copies of the same images on our computer. Yay, for external hard drive backups!

Thank you guys, I think I will be shooting in RAW from now on! I am converted! (ooh, no pun intended)

[venchka]

Grinning. Glad you see the light.

[kenw]

Wayne, remember, unless you have some software to render the RAW, this is what a RAW looks like:
10001001010100101010101010101010110011010101011011 01010101010101010101001010101010101010101010101010 10101010101010101100010010101001010101010101010101 10011010101011011010101010101010101010010101010101 01010101010101010101010101010101011000100101010010 10101010101010101100110101010110110101010101010101 01010010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010 11000100101010010101010101010101011001101010101101 10101010101010101010100101010101010101010101010101 01010101010101010110001001010100101010101010101010 11001101010101101101010101010101010101001010101010 10101010101010101010101010101010101100010010101001 01010101010101010110011010101011011010101010101010 10101001010101010101010101010101010101010101010101 01100010010101001010101010101010101100110101010110 11010101010101010101010010101010101010101010101010 10101010101010101011000100101010010101010101010101 01100110101010110110101010101010101010100101010101 01010101010101010101010101010101010110001001010100 10101010101010101011001101010101101101010101010101 01010100101010101010101010101010101010101010101010 101

;)

[auddii]

You also have a setting on your camera for RAW+jpeg, which will allow you to compare the two for an exact same photo.

Somewhere on here there was a good explanation of RAW: (dumbed down version) jpeg is a compression of a lot of information as rendered by the camera - the camera does what it wants, and most of the information in the photo is lost. In RAW, you get back all the information that the camera can take in and you get to do what you want with it.