Another Newbie

[darkangel]

Good evening all im very new here...i loooove photography but have never owned a decent camera until a few weeks ago...i got my self a 450D im enjoying it very much and am slooooowly starting to get use to all the settings...People i know where asking me why i dont use the pre-set features i said come on thats cheating i wanna know how to take the picture myself...

So hopefully i can gain some helpful information from this site and i can improve more on my photos and techniques

[OZZI-BLOKE]

Welcome to the LAF Angel. Good to see you want to learn how to use your camera properly.
You should find the people on here very helpful, If there's something you need to know just ask.
You will also get some good tips on how to improve your images to. Anyway, Enjoy the forum, we are
all a pretty friendly bunch here.

[Analog6]

Welcome and good on you for doing it the hard way and taking full advantage of all the features your camer a offers.  Are you shooting in RAW or RAW+jpeg (does the 450D do this, anyone?), not just jpeg?  WHile it means bigger files abnd conversion post camera, your files have mopre depth and tones.

[darkangel]

Ive been taking my pics in RAW only because i fiddle with them in photoshop although im not the best with the program and i certainly do not know much i can spend hours just playing around with my images....Yes the camera does RAW + JPEG...i didnt know whether this was worth doing??? any suggestions...

[bigbob]

Hello and welcome to LAF it dose become addictive so don't hold back the more you post the more advice you can get good luck

[Analog6]

RAW + jpeg is very handy for images to upload to websites like this one.  You can usually just tweak the jpeg a bit to get a good result for the forums, web sites etc, but you have the nice detailed RAW to have a real play in Photoshop or whatever of the images you consider your 'best'.

[Tim N]

Hello and welcome to the forum ... if you want good advice and a nice friendly atmosphere you have come to the right place for sure !!
Where are you located ? .... Scratch that ... just looked at your profile, Brissy ... good to have another Brissy member ... you might want to consider our Fort Lytton meet up (with possible afternoon on the bay) on the 31st of May with Odille, Ross + Cher and possibly Derek ... (plus yours truly of course)

[OZZI-BLOKE]

RAW + jpeg will only take up more room on your memory cards. If a person is going to put there images on the web they would be better of starting with a RAW image and have more colour and detail to start with.
A jpeg is already a compressed image so you have less to start with and editing damages pixels more.
The more you start with the more you should end with, especially when printing.
Myself, I'm not a great photographer so I like to try and put only the best images I can on the net, then
if improvements are needed they can be done. 

[Tim N]

Personally I almost never shoot in RAW, how often do you plan on printing out your images poster sized or larger ? Have you seen the cheetah photo ? I had that cropped + fixed in photoshop then printed on canvas to 1m long x 50cm high and it looks fantastic, it was shot with a 30D and in jpeg.
Unless you are shooting for a fashion mag and being paid big bucks all it means is that noone can look at your images until you spend hours in photoshop converting them to jpeg or similar. Thats my opinion anyway

Besides, now I have my 1D mk III photoshop CS2 cant read my RAW files anyway, even with the updated raw file installed, have to upgrade to CS3 minimum

[Analog6]

Ozzi: the actual web uploads compress the images anyway - mine are never as sharp here as they are in the originals. And media cards are so cheap now anyway, I looked at Lexar Platinum ones today - 4Gb for $35 - hell, you can stuff a lot on that size card.

Tim: I shoot everything in RAW because I reckon you never know.  Yes, I agree I've seen great results from plain old jpegs but when you consider they record 12-25% of the available data only after in camera compression and throw away the rest of the data, why bother buying an expensive DSLR at all?

[Tim N]

why bother buying an expensive DSLR at all?

JPEG quality as long as you are in Adobe RGB space is good enough for 98 / 99% of applications. Unless you are printing out massive images or doing a shoot for a magazine I cant see the point.
The reason you buy a DSLR in the first place is for the size of the sensor and the quality of the lenses. The more expensive bodies have larger sensors, e.g. 5D full frame 1D 1.3 crop. Also as they get more expensive they have better weather seals, better chips, better shutter speed + the potential for more actuations, far more versatility in user settings. The few photographers I have worked with Sports and otherwise never use RAW. Especially now days with the wireless transmitters, the photos get sent straight to their laptops which they leave next to the field and then they email them to their newspaper / employer / stock site instantly.

[darkangel]

It seems like the choice between RAW and JPEG is an individual thing, i totally understand the aspect of taking everything in JPEG when having a wireless transmitter and the effeciency of being able to get them to the newspapers etc as quickly as possible. I think form this conversation i might try taking the pics with RAW+JPEG for a while until i know what i prefer....i am a learner and although this takes up more space i do take so many dud pics that i can easly delet them 

[OZZI-BLOKE]

Odille, I agree with you on the RAW images, you never know when someone may want a big print.
Jpeg's are good I know, but IMO and from articles I have read you get more colour and detail from Raw and you have much more control over the final image. Using ACR to edit a RAW file is non destructive and RAW
also has more colours than jpeg, 4095 to 255. Professionals that shoot for news papers and some
magazines need to get images in as quick as they can, jpeg is really their only option, it could mean the difference between a good pay check or nothing. A jpeg done in camera starts as raw info and is converted to jpeg with preset settings that you have little control over, they can be edited in PS but the editing
process is losless and you don't have as many options. The more you edit the more you loose.
Angel, your right, it is an individual preferenceand it comes down to the person pressing the button.
I still shoot some in jpeg here and there that are unlikely to be printed and are only used on the web
by the people I get them for. Images for myself are all RAW, It helps to that I like using Photoshop.
If I ever had a pro camera I would probably shoot more in jpeg but that won't happen any time soon.

[Analog6]

That's why I love the option of shooting both at the same time that the 30D gives me.  I can download just the jpegs if I am in a hurry and want to post one on the web or send to a newspaper, and play with the RAW files at my leisure.  Storage is, as I said, so cheap nowadays, even for external HDDs, I really cannot see any advantage to limiting my camera's power.

I looked at a recent pic taken with the 30D, the sunrise I posted about 3 weeks ago.  The RAW (CR2) file is 6.91Mb, the jpeg captured at the same time (I have it set to the largest jpeg setting) is 1.30Mb.  Why would I ever want to discard (permanaently, if I shot only in jpeg) 5.61Mb of detail?

[Truckman]

Welcome to you... ...Ben

[OZZI-BLOKE]

Your right about how cheap storage space is these days Odille. I just purchased (Last week) a new
500gb Seagate Free agent external HDD. It cost me $129 but would be cheaper in the city.
With that and my 320gb external HDD I shouldn't run out of room just yet.
The file size of RAW from the Pentax K20D is 23 mb and around 10mb for jpeg large.
Thats over half of the information I would be loosing, and RAW is 14 bit to, not 8 bit.