Digital Photography 101

[Andres Bonilla]

I just got my first digital camera a Canon Rebel with a 17-85 mm IS, I went ahead and got a 1 gig Dane CF but before I got it I bought  2 Compact Flash cards from Costco, they were scan disk but they were also very small compared to the Dane and they do not fit into the Rebel's cf compartment. Do they come in different seizes? If I shot snapshots of family wich setting would be good to print jpgs, fine large, LARGE, medium? I would never print a snapshot in jpge bigger than 8x10, problably 5x7 would be the biggest, I would problably use RAW for more serious photography. I saw a portable storage device for $ 500 dollars has anybody tried the Vosonic for less? Is the Adobe RAW conversion good enough or do I need a third party software, I heard the software that comes with the camera is not very good. Is Dane cf any good compared to Lexar and scandisk?

Thanks,


Andres

[DarkPenguin]

If they do not fit in a CF slot then they are not CF cards.  There is quite a variety of flash memory available for digital cameras.  They are not interchangeable.  Perhaps you bought a SD card?

Can't help you with Dane.  Rob Galbraith's site seems to be good for all things flash memory related.

[jdemott]

If the memory cards from Costco do not fit, then they are not Compact Flash but some other type of memory card.  There are several types (such as SD, miniSD xD etc.), so you will need to exchange the ones you bought for CF cards.  The different manufacturers such as Sandisk make flash memory in a variety of formats.

I would recommend that you always shoot at the highest available resolution unless you know why you are choosing a lower resolution.  You never know when you will take a great shot that you will want to crop before you print it.

The Adobe RAW conversion is quite good and certainly would be a good place to start, particularly if you already have it or are already planning to get Photoshop.

[jule]

Andres, when I launched into digital I gave myself a safety net, by setting the camera on Large jpg + RAW. This would give me a fairly good quality image whilst I learnt how to process RAW in Adobe Camera RAW and CS2.

After 6 months, I am still not very proficient at my Raw processing, but yesterday I set my camera only on RAW! Thought it was about time I took my safety net away!  

[Andres Bonilla]

Thank you guys, I went to Samy's camera and the salesman also think I got an sd type. I will try the Danes and then I may get Scandisk because it comes with some recovery software in case your data gets corrupted. I will also try the different types of jpegs but msot definetively I will shot RAW.

[jani]

I shoot in RAW plus medium fine JPEG.

Earlier, I shot in RAW plus large fine JPEG, but I realized that the JPEGs were only used for generating quick for-the-web conversions to smaller sizes, while I always use the RAW files for more serious use.

As to shooting with RAW: do it from day one!

I've mentioned this in another thread this summer or autumn:

I was the best man in a wedding, and I wanted to have some pictures of the couple as well as the rest of us. Running around with one arm in a cast and a big camera around my shoulder didn't strike me as the proper way to behave as a best man, so I handed my camera to a friend.

The friend had some technical problems with the camera in program mode (P) or aperture priority mode (Av), and switched to full auto (green rectangle) instead. Several shots had colour casts in them due to difficult lighting, as well as exposure difficulties. These were unrecoverable because in full auto, the camera only shoots JPEGs. So, a dozen or so shots were simply unusable, so much for those memories ...

If the images had been taken in RAW, they would have been recoverable -- at least to some extent -- and the memories would have been there.

So shoot in RAW, and stay away from any other settings than: P, Av, Tv, M and A-DEP

[Andres Bonilla]

Thank you Jan, I did not know that shooting full auto would only give jpeg files, Thanks for the advise.

Andres

[dwdallam]

Thank you Jan, I did not know that shooting full auto would only give jpeg files, Thanks for the advise.

Andres
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I know what you did at Cosco. I was there today and almost confused the Compact Flash with the SD card. Just exchange them.

Also, they sell "Sandisk" not Scandisk. No biggie. I wouldn't be surprised to see they go from the 1GIG size to the 2 GIG in the next couple fo months.

[dwdallam]

I shoot in RAW plus medium fine JPEG.

Earlier, I shot in RAW plus large fine JPEG, but I realized that the JPEGs were only used for generating quick for-the-web conversions to smaller sizes, while I always use the RAW files for more serious use.

As to shooting with RAW: do it from day one!

I've mentioned this in another thread this summer or autumn:

I was the best man in a wedding, and I wanted to have some pictures of the couple as well as the rest of us. Running around with one arm in a cast and a big camera around my shoulder didn't strike me as the proper way to behave as a best man, so I handed my camera to a friend.

The friend had some technical problems with the camera in program mode (P) or aperture priority mode (Av), and switched to full auto (green rectangle) instead. Several shots had colour casts in them due to difficult lighting, as well as exposure difficulties. These were unrecoverable because in full auto, the camera only shoots JPEGs. So, a dozen or so shots were simply unusable, so much for those memories ...

If the images had been taken in RAW, they would have been recoverable -- at least to some extent -- and the memories would have been there.

So shoot in RAW, and stay away from any other settings than: P, Av, Tv, M and A-DEP
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Yeah that's right. You can correct much more in RAW that you cannot with JPG, as long as the exposure is near enough, which auto will give you. After I bought my 20D and read up on RAW, I never looked back. And if you don't want to put much work into snapshots, just open them into PS without doing anything to them in RAW--if they look good enough for snaps--save them as tiff, print and you're done, and you still have a copy of the original RAW if you ever do want to go back and process them better. I know it's a lot to learn, and the learning curve is high, but just hang in there and you will get things like you want them pretty fast. I take notes and save them in case I forget stuff, tehn jsut go back and reread teh notes I took. Usually that is enough to jog my memory back into full knowledge of what I had recently learned, and then forgotten. It happens if you don't shoot often enough.