Help im a newie

Hello Glen, welcome to the apple forum.

This topic is mostly opinion, and theres little doubt many others would disagree with me.

RAW format is for bad cameras, difficult shots, or people who like fussing around with technology more then making photographs.

RAW format takes up far more processing power and storage then Jpegs do, and all that is gained with a good camera, is the ability to recover the shot a little more if your camera was set up wrong or you exceeded your cameras limits.

RAW format slows down your cameras shot to shot time and may cause you to miss taking a really good picture.

There, thats my opinion and will doubtless annoy half the people on this forum 🙂

The FZ100 is a good little camera, but the sensor is fairly small and as such, it has some difficulties producing high ISO photos with good detail and low noise. I'm not knocking the camera! The camera you bring with you is far better then the huge bag of equipment you leave home and with a (35mm equiv) 24-600mm optical zoom, they FZ100 is a joy to operate.

That said, the FZ100 develops noise problems above ISO 400 1/60 or more, though it does pretty good all the way up to ISO 1600 if the shutter time is 1/250 or less.

If you shoot in RAW, you can perhaps improve on the noise reduction slightly better then the in camera processor can, but only a little.

The one thing raw development is very good at is correcting white balance. There is a simple work around for this, don't get the white balance wrong when you take the picture! Learn all the white balance controls the FZ100 has, practice with them, and learn when you need to take manual control.

Problem solved, you don't need or want to shoot RAW if you learn your camera well and don't exceed it's ISO capabilities 😀

Have fun, Take a lot of pictures and read all you can about picture taking.

Its all about being in the right place at the right time, pointing your camera in the right direction and having it's controls set right.

This website discusses many things about taking good pictures and the professional photographer who runs the site dislikes raw just like me. This is a link to his opinion of RAW formats, but there are many worthwhile things to browse on this site http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/raw.htm

There, thats my opinion and will doubtless annoy half the people on this forum

You got that right 🙂
But I agree: shooting RAW shouldn't stop anyone from learning the correct way of exposing and balancing correctly. These are skills that need to become second nature no matter how much headroom we get back in post.

I understand the reasoning behind shooting JPEG. But for me RAW isn't just about saving mistakes in the field - it's also about interpretation. The famous Adams quote about the negative being the score and the print being the performance. RAW is a negative. It allows me much more freedom to re-interpret a picture in many different ways. With JPEG, it's like starting with a scanned print: there's a fixed set of information already defined. In my opinion - and for my workflow - this makes it too restrictive.

That said, we were all shooting JPEG not so long ago and doing fine. I've embraced RAW completely and would never go back but there's no right or wrong answer. And if you're starting out in photography this is secondary to many other skills that need to be acquired.

I read that Ken Rockwell article many years ago. It's one way to look at it. But I have to say that experience makes me disagree with pretty much everything he says. And personally - without going into details - I can't say I consider him a great ressource, especially for beginners. But to each his own.

Now having said all that, I think Joey's advice in your situation is absolutely right: just shoot. Use JPEG if that's what you can use right now. Learn how to use your camera, learn how to use Aperture. And don't delete CS3! Photoshop is an entirely different piece of software that can be used in conjunction with AP3. I use it less and less these days but it's still an essential tool in any photographer's arsenal.

Have fun!

Jade Leary wrote:
The famous Adams quote about the negative being the score and the print being the performance.

I didn't know Gomez Adams took photographs.



Message was edited by: Frank Caggiano

Hi, Glen, welcome aboard. Must agree with shooting RAW. You will learn more, and more quickly. Jpg is RAW which is processed in camera. Why not have all the data captured plus YOU have the control. Do the processing yourself. Look at Aperture more as a primary Digital Asset Management tool, RAW converter (although it is much more powerful than that). PSCS3 is your fine tuning tool. A necessary part of the whole process. Shoot every day, carry your camera all the time. We really learn by our mistakes in this great way of photo life. Jades post is right on target even if he does not know Gomez. Very funny, Frank.

Best,
Chuck

What Jade Leary said. Top to bottom. Every sentence.

I have almost never shot JPG. JPG is an excellent image format for the electronic display and transfer of digital images. It is an awful format for image recording, and is weak, problematic, and unnecessary for image storage. (For those old enough -- it is to photography what the 45 was to the music business -- according to the history books I've read.)

Which of the 180 or so raw formats are you using for archival storage?

Every digital camera in the world shoots in RAW. To record a digital image from a CCD or CMOS is otherwise impossible.

The choice from there is how to develop it in a manner that can be displayed on the web, printed, emailed, or opened in more then a hand full of computer programs that are all incompatible with many RAW formats.

I choose to let a processor specifically designed and optimized for developing RAW images do the work. The manufactures of my cameras developed that processors to work with their CCD or CMOS RAW format and gave me many controls on how it is to be rendered, many of which have dedicated buttons for quick access. This is what the JPEGs out of a camera are, RAW data developed into a JPEG on purpose built hardware with optimized software.

If your obsessive, then perhaps a program like CS5 and significant labor can improve on the product, but we are talking about Aperture here.

Aperture at best has weak RAW controls for the cameras it does support which sure isn't all of them.

I have far more specific control in my camera then using spray and pray RAW recording in the hopes of making a usable picture later.

Better yet, the camera has an awesome screen on the back of it where I can look at the picture I just took, see if it is to my taste, and adjust and reshoot if not, no trip to my computer to develop the RAW and back to reshoot required 😀

As I said before, opinions abound and mine is likely minority. Try both. Just don't feel inferior if you decide JPEG looks just fine.

Interestingly nearly everyone I know that earns their living with a camera shoots JPEG, but I come from a journalism background and time is money there.

Context matters. If I knew this very day I would be paid $100,000 for a picture that was going to be blown up to 40"X80", I would shoot film, and medium format at that!

I don't lug a medium format camera with me everywhere because they are big and inconvenient!

Never the less, medium format is VASTLY superior to any prosumer RAW camera available.

I don't shoot RAW on the cameras I do have because, if the camera is good and controls are set right, the difference is minuscule for a lot of inconvenience and labor.

But I'm posting on a computer forum so the correct answer here is: get a bigger computer, bigger hard drive, more memory, and use the most computer intensive method to record images or your work product will suck LOL 😝

Heres a gallery, all shot in JPEG

http://kenrockwell.com/trips/2009-08-yellowstone/index.htm

Have a look for yourself. Since it is personal fulfillment you desire, it is entirely subjective anyway.

Have fun. The pictures you take are always better then the ones you don't.

Aperture, JPEG and RAW can help you technically improve your images, but it might not improve your photographs.

Here is someone who can take great images on a fashion shoot with an iPhone:
http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/theonlinephotographer/2011/01/it-wont-be-long-.html

The key is the lighting and knowing how to set up the camera to take the best shot, as well as composition and exposure. These are all done before you get to Aperture, and as far as JPEG vs RAW, the GIGO law applies. RAW cannot always help recover a photo that was simply exposed wrong.

The key to taking better photographs is a three legged stool:
Take more photos.
Critique those photos to see what works for you and what doesn't.
Improve Technique using the feedback from the Critique.

Aperture and RAW vs JPEG can be considered improvements to technique, and Aperture can greatly help you understand why one photo works and another doesn't (comparing F-stops and such), but it is not a magic way to take better photos. A lousy carpenter with better tools is still a lousy carpenter.

Jades post is right on target even if he does not know Gomez

What do you mean I don't know Gomez? I know his family intimately!
For the record though: it's Gomez Addams not Adams - so there 🙂

Good one Frank!

Jade Leary wrote:

Jades post is right on target even if he does not know Gomez

What do you mean I don't know Gomez? I know his family intimately!
For the record though: it's Gomez Addams not Adams - so there 🙂

Well It was the best I could come up with on short notice, guess I could have used Grizzly Adams, huh?

Good one Frank!

Thanks, can't wait to get to 1000 pts and make level 3 so I can use that image as my avitar!

Frank Caggiano wrote:
Thanks, can't wait to get to 1000 pts and make level 3 so I can use that image as my avatar!

Level 3 allows custom avatars? Cool. What else have I missed?