From: Sandy King (sanking@clemson.edu)
Date: 08/01/03-07:46:40 AM Z
Mark,
So if I understand this right, the RAW stuff only applies to digital
cameras, not to files made by scanning negatives?
Sandy
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>Sandy,
>
>This time of year in South Carolina, I'd be very careful about going
>"RAW".... with all the poison ivy and critters down there you might
>need Dick's Mesquite Gum for more than making images.
>
>On the serious side regarding RAW files:
>
>I sometimes shoot with a Nikon D1X, which has RAW capabilities.
>
>First, I never shoot in JPEG format-you lose a lot with JPEG compression.
>
>Second, TIFF files take up much room on your compact flash cards-I
>think it is around 15 Megs each. A compressed RAW file (its a
>lossless compression in NEF format, which is Nikon's proprietary RAW
>format.) only takes up 3 Megs.
>
>Third, the cool thing about RAW format is that when you import them
>into Photoshop, they also contain what is called EXIF data-all the
>info about the camera settings. It even tells you the date and time
>of the shot, the lens you used, the f-stop & shutter speed, what
>zoom setting you used on the lens, whether you turned on image
>stabilisation on a lens that has it, and other camera settings such
>as sharpening, contrast, etc. Thus, think of it as the raw image
>data (just like scanning with no adjustments applied) with none of
>the camera settings applied to it. In the camera, the thumbnail you
>see on the little screen is shown with the settings applied-plus you
>have a histogram of the image. When you import the image into
>Photoshop or some of the Nikon software, you get access to all the
>camera settings-so if you made any error, you can apply any of the
>settings you want, modify them, not use them or whatever. Its like
>getting a reprieve on each shot before the pellets drop in the
>bucket at midnight.
>
>By the way, I always turn off sharpening and contrast when I am
>shooting. That is much better done in Photoshop and you get a
>longer tonal range and less chance of highlights sucking.
>
>So I usually shoot to get as rich of a histogram as I can-full tonal
>range without blowing out the highlights and then, of course, the
>image is in 16 bit color, so it is very rich in tonality. I can
>tell right away from the histogram of the shot on the camera. If
>there is an extreme contrast range in the shot, I can put the camera
>on a tripod and shoot two images-one for the highlights and one for
>the shadows and then combine the two in Photoshop and blend the best
>of both shots.
>
>Also an interesting little quirk of the D1X is the fact that RAW
>files allow you to do something else with the image. Normally D1X
>images are interpolated DOWN by the software to get 6 Megapixel
>images. However, with RAW you have the option to interpolate the
>narrow side UP and get around a 10-11 megapixel image. This is sort
>of like the scanning companies screwing with the stepper motors to
>get that higher scanning resolution. But it works and since you are
>only interpolating in one direction, it doesn't look bad at all and
>its a much bigger file.
>
>There...that's almost all I know about RAW and my digits are raw so
>I will stop here before everyone falls asleep.
>
>Mark Nelson
>
>
>
>
>
>
>In a message dated 7/31/03 10:19:29 PM, sanking@clemson.edu writes:
>
>>
>>OK, why should I want to go RAW? What are the advantages of RAW over TIFF?
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>Sandy King
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