Camera suggestions?

[RogerM]

That looks like a really good choice Neil. My first digital camera was a Canon and I'll be very surprised if you are anything other than delighted with the results. If you intend to take it away on holiday I would suggest that you buy a b***** great additional memory card to go with it - say 4GB - because you will find that you will take 10 x as many photos as you would have done on film.

 

[Newbie_Neil]

Hi Roger

I would suggest that you buy a b***** great additional memory card to go with it - say 4GB - because you will find that you will take 10 x as many photos as you would have done on film.

Thanks for the tip. As a result of my research I ordered 2 x 4Gb cards as they were so cheap.

Cheers,
Neil

 

[Lord Nibbo]

Thanks for the tip. As a result of my research I ordered 2 x 4Gb cards as they were so cheap.

Cheers,
Neil

8gb :shock: at the highest settings on my camera that would hold over 2000 pics, at it's normal settings 28000 pics :shock: I hope you got a big hard drive

 

[Shultzy]

Neil, don't forget an additional battery, they always go flat at the most inopportune moment.

 

[Smudger]

Does anyone else here shoot RAW format? I was put onto it by my son, and I am amazed at how good it can be. In his hands, not mine...

 

[Lord Nibbo]

Does anyone else here shoot RAW format? I was put onto it by my son, and I am amazed at how good it can be. In his hands, not mine...

Yes, Canon do RAW and sRAW covering a range of 12.5 meg (big as in A3 or poster size quality) per pic. Down to about .5 meg per pic. For normal pics to use on the web though I see no point in using it.

This pic was originally taken in RAW format but compressed to jpeg

HERE is the same pic reduced down to approx 1/8th its original size but still far to big to post on this web site. :lol:

 

[Harbo]

I take the majority my pictures with my Canon 20D in RAW unless I was desperate for maximum number of shots (cannot use RAW in the fully auto preset modes). But I use a 2Gb microdive and have several other CD cards so that as never been a problem.
RAW does not use any compression so captures the maximum amount of info - I have taken photos in near darkness and the software has been able to produce an acceptable image from it.
From RAW you can convert to other formats (TIFF, JPEG etc) quite easily but you cannot go the other way.
You do do not need to store them in RAW - to save space I use TIFF and JPEG for web stuff. But for the really good photos I have managed to take I keep the RAW file (Canon PSD) and have printed them out to A3.
I use an external drive to store them, together with CD or DVD as backups.
As I see it, there really is no reason not to take photos in the best format possible especially if you have paid good money for a quality camera?

Rod

 

[cutting42]

Does anyone else here shoot RAW format? I was put onto it by my son, and I am amazed at how good it can be. In his hands, not mine...

Hi

Yes I shoot nothing but RAW on my elderly Nikon D1h D SLR with a tiny (by modern stds) 2.7Mb resolution but extremely good low light capabilities, 5 frames per sec and the most fabulous colours and gentle none digital looking noise I have ever seen (except for the latest £3K Pro cameras). Like Tony I use a 18-200mm lens and treat the whole thing as mostly point and shoot in Program Mode tweaking the aperture and shutter speed when I want to change depth of field etc as using RAW can allow for a lot more detail and modifications post processing than straight out of the camera jpg's.

I love playing with the images at home on the PC, cropping and setting custom processing but often the in built camera settings are pretty optimal. That is just my take on the hobby, my wife doesn't understand why I cant just show the pics straight after uploading but I like to mess about with them first!

DSLRs are a revelation for shooting action and low light without flash and a compact cannot compare on sensor size and lens quality but are sooo much more convenient.

 

[caretaker]

Gareth, sorry to but in but is the bottom picture from Cornwall or Devon way?

 

[Newbie_Neil]

Hi LN

8gb :shock: at the highest settings on my camera that would hold over 2000 pics, at it's normal settings 28000 pics :shock: I hope you got a big hard drive

They will hold about an hour of video, if I need it at some point.

Cheers,
Neil

PS I love the photo.

 

[Newbie_Neil]

Hi Gareth

The quality of your photographs is just amazing.

Cheers,
Neil

 

[cutting42]

Gareth, sorry to but in but is the bottom picture from Cornwall or Devon way?

Hi Caretaker

It is in North Devon, the National Trust teashop and visitor centre at Watersmeet near Lynton and Lynmouth. Serves one of the finest Cream Teas I have ever had!

 

[cutting42]

Hi Gareth

The quality of your photographs is just amazing.

Cheers,
Neil

Hi Neil

Thank you very much for your kind comments. Photography was just a minor interest of mine until the advent of Digital camera's. Suddenly I could get instant feedback and snap away to my hearts content without worrying about the cost of film and processing. I started with very simple compact Fuji compact cameras, worked up to the better Fuji compacts with bigger zooms but still got very frustrated with the speed of the camera's - the shutter would not click when I wanted to take the picture. On advice at the time I moved to dslr's ending up with my current Nikon.

The camera is way better than I am so any bad pics are down to me not the camera which has been a huge push for me to work on framing, looking for light and optimizing the focusing and depth of field. I also like informal portraits and candid pictures where speed of operation is critical which is one reason I chose the D1h as it used to be the papparazzi camera of choice for many years being fast focusing, robust and great in low light.

Couple of low light pics, no flash taken at London zoo a couple of weeks ago:

 

[gidon]

Good choice Neil - I have its little brother (860IS) and it's a great carry everwhere camera.

Does anyone else here shoot RAW format? I was put onto it by my son, and I am amazed at how good it can be. In his hands, not mine...

I have my Canon 350D set to RAW + JPEG mode - this works best for me. Developing a RAW workflow can be time consuming so 99% of the time I just use the "developed" JPEG's, but anytime I like I can get the RAW and play with it . And the good thing is as RAW software improves you'll be able to get better and better results from it. It's invaluable having the RAW file for incorrect white balance settings and small exposure errors.

Canon DSLR's come with some very easy to use software called RAW Image Task which will develop the RAW file exactly as it does in camera - which means it's a good way to learn how RAW works - I can recommend to anyone new to RAW (with a Canon camera ).

Cheers

Gidon

 

[kafkaian]

Some cracking photos on here and the one thing I miss from my old SLR days is the use of a very fast lens that some of you possess with your dSLRs in order to get that discerning "slither of focus" shot.

 

[Paul Chapman]

Hi Gidon and Gareth,

Is there anywhere on the web that explains all this RAW stuff in easy to understand language. I've done conventional, black & white, film-based photography and processing for years and have no difficulty with it, but all this digital stuff is a black art to me :? :? :lol:

Cheers :wink:

Paul

 

[TonyW]

Paul, hope that I am not butting in here but the following info might be of some help:
What Is RAW? (stole this from somewhere )
RAW is a type of image file format like JPEG, TIFF and PSD that can usually be selected from the quality settings
menu in your camera. Unlike other file types, RAW contains the picture information exactly as it read on the camera’s
image sensor before the camera’s processor has had a chance to enhance the picture and turn it into a standard file type.
Like JPEG. The picture is unusable in the RAW state and needs to be converted into a standard image before you can
do anything with it.
Back on your computer, you can use a RAW converter to take the place of the camera’s processor and turn the RAW
into a TIFF or JPEG. This might sound like an unnecessary extra step but it does offer significant advantages.
The main ones are the quality and flexibility. RAW’s are a lossless file, so give the ultimate image quality. Plus,
you also have the opportunity to change the appearance of your image by adjusting the white balance,
sharpness, exposure, contrast and saturation. The Raw Data contains much more detail than a standard JPEG,
so amazing quality adjustments can be made quickly and easily.

A few links to get you started on your journey
http://www.northlight-images.co.uk/arti ... e_raw.html
http://photo.net/learn/raw/
http://www.photoxels.com/tutorial_raw.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAW_image_format

Hope this of some help
Cheers
Tony

EDIT: Just remembered something (you will need to double check this), if you use a Fuji camera the raw setting saves the file with a .RAF extension which is not recognised by Photosho. There are Photoshop plug ins available but I understand that they do not support the Fuji .RAF format.
So you will either have to use the Fuji convertor or try this one
http://www.geocities.co.jp/SiliconValle ... s7raw.html
I have a Fuji compact and have played with this a little although have got lazy and tend to save my pics to Tiff - I know I am missing the good stuff though

 

[cutting42]

Hi Gidon and Gareth,

Is there anywhere on the web that explains all this RAW stuff in easy to understand language. I've done conventional, black & white, film-based photography and processing for years and have no difficulty with it, but all this digital stuff is a black art to me :? :? :lol:

Cheers :wink:

Paul

Hi Paul

In addition to Tonys excellent links is this one:

http://www.dpreview.com/learn/?/Glossary/

And specifically the RAW definition which is pretty similar to Tonys description.

http://www.dpreview.com/learn/?/Glossar ... RAW_01.htm


Using RAW is a learning process as you need to develop a sequence of actions often called a workflow. This is my workflow:

1/ Take pictures using RAW setting on the camera. Mine can only do RAW only or jpeg only, modern cameras can do both but clearly this takes up more space on the card. RAW can be stored uncompressed or lossless compressed. I use lossless compressed as it is no different IMO to uncompressed.

2/ Import the pictures from the card/camera onto your PC or MAC, review and delete the horrors

3/ You then need some software to process the RAW files. I use a simpler version of a Pro program called Capture One by Phase One which can be downloaded and trialled here http://www.phaseone.com/4/ . Adobe Photoshop can be used for RAW processing and all the major camera manufacturers can supply RAW processing software

4/ Set white balance, automatic, preset settings for Flash, Cloudy, Bright sunlight etc etc. or manually set the whitebalance and customise to taste

5/ Crop picture. Unless you have every lens ever made and perfect framing technique. This is where you can isolate the best section of the picture and zoom in or just cut out unwanted edge detail. With high res cameras such as 10Mp you can crop quite severely without losing resolution too much. With my low res camera I need to be careful as I don't too many pixels (2.7mp)

6/ Select exposure settings, again auto presets or manual fiddling with saturation, contrast, hue, balance, plus or minus exposure. This is the most fun bit to me and along with the white balance you can rescue many a poor exposure

7/ Repeat for all pictures

8/ Set up a batch and process all the above

There are shortcuts and if you shoot well initially there should not be too much custom processing and you can get through your pics quite quickly. You tend to concentrate on the good pics and put your effort into these. For holiday snaps I just put the lot in a simple Batch and use auto settings rather like the camera would do.

Here is a workflow from someone who knows what he is doing

http://www.ronbigelow.com/articles/work ... _basic.htm

 

[woodbloke]

Hi Gidon and Gareth,

Is there anywhere on the web that explains all this RAW stuff in easy to understand language. I've done conventional, black & white, film-based photography and processing for years and have no difficulty with it, but all this digital stuff is a black art to me :? :? :lol:

Cheers :wink:

Paul

....and Paul's b/w pics are definitely worth a look! - Rob

 

[gidon]

Hi Gidon and Gareth,

Is there anywhere on the web that explains all this RAW stuff in easy to understand language. I've done conventional, black & white, film-based photography and processing for years and have no difficulty with it, but all this digital stuff is a black art to me :? :? :lol:

Cheers :wink:

Paul

Paul

Are you au fait with digital imaging? Developing the RAW file is much like editing any other digital image - it's just you have more control over the final image. If you've not done much digital image edtiting then I would recommend reading up on that first and then RAW. Something like Photoshop Elements is great and will also develop RAW. And Kelby's Photoshop Elements for Digital Photographers is a good book to get you started and it covers RAW (developing in Elements). Sorry not on the web but very handy book in my opinion.

If you just after info on RAW then previous posters have hopefully already supplied some useful links.

Cheers

Gidon