jwkwd
TPF Noob!
I am brand new to digital photography. If I plan to use RAW only, can I just put those images into a folder or whatever until I get conversion software? TIA
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^ He didn't say which camera he was getting, but I see some film Nikons in his profile, and Nikon DSLRs don't come with the Capture NX software that will handle their RAW files for the most part. I think the new D300 and D3 come with it, but only or a limited time on launch.
Well that's the problem with what you're doing. RAW files are all proprietary, the files all change format, the software all changes, and you might find that a year from now none of the RAW software out there will work with your D1 files anymore at worst, or just doesn't seem to handle them well. This is especially true since the D1 is a pretty old camera that not a whole lot of people shoot with anymore. There's little reason for software developers to keep supporting old D1 files considering that so few are still used. You might have to dig up some extremely old software to use the files, which then might not even run if it wasn't designed for the newer operating systems out there which all change too. This is why RAW is a horrible format for archival or if you're not going to immediately process them into JPGs. That's why I'd strongly recommend shooting JPG for now, which is universal. You can still do a ton of processing on JPGs too, if that's what you're interested in.I just wanted to know if I could dump whatever pictures I might take with it on a computer and someday get around to playing around with them. What I did not know was the fact that Nikon, Canon or whomever, had their own "language".
and you might find that a year from now none of the RAW software out there will work with your D1 files anymore at worst, or just doesn't seem to handle them well.
This is why RAW is a horrible format for archival or if you're not going to immediately process them into JPGs.
But then if you buy a new computer with a newer OS and it won't run the old program you're hosed...The easy solution here is just to not upgrade your software, or keep an old version installed for handling the older files....
Technically JPEG doesn't "throw away" data. It just keeps what's needed whereas RAW is extremely wasteful which is why the files are so huge. I've looked at some fairly messed up photos at 100% on my screen that I processed in both RAW and JPG and was hard pressed to tell the difference at the equivalent of having my nose in a 3 foot wide print. I make mistakes too, but you can still fix a lot of the common mistakes all from a JPG just as well, good enough for even large print sizes (20x30" for me). The only thing RAW has ever really saved me on is when I've completely blown out highlights, in which case you're screwed on a JPG, but can still recover it as long as you're not too far out in left field if you shot RAW. Still, even with completely blown out and "technically incorrect" shots, it's art. Sometimes "mistakes" can look surprisingly good.I would have thought it was the better archival medium as it doesn't throw any information away like a JPEG does - If you want to pull more out of the photo later, you're more likely able to do it with RAW....
The Auto Contrast ("tone compensation") on the Nikons does a pretty darn good job of handling almost any lighting condition that you could throw at it for you, which gives you nice workable JPG for almost any scene. I have to say that if I did shoot with Canon doing the photo-journalist stuff that I tend to do, I'd be far more likely to shoot RAW just due to the lack of auto contrast control alone. Anything more than mild contrast adjustments done to JPGs can definitely start to look bad, but fortunately Nikon takes care of that for you. I can point any of my Nikons from one scene to the next with huge variations in scene contrast and they'll keep things under control on the JPG outputs.If the file size is the only reason not to shoot RAW, then just get a new harddrive. A 500 GB external USB harddrive is ridiculously cheap. RAW is so much smarter than JPG. Especially if you really need that RAW information. When I do band shoots and similar then I always shoot with the lowest contrast settings and eliminate all the dark areas in Lightroom. Then I do the contrast work in Photoshop. It gives a different look than the camera's contrast or just simple Photoshop contrast. If I was to do this with JPG then the quality would be lower.