Canon A570 IS Help please

[Nemrod]

I understand the RAW file but what are you doing there that cannot be done in Photoshop to the jpeg file?

N

 

[Choyster]

I think you can make all the relevant adjustments in Photoshop but doing it in Picasa saves me a lot of time and money! Using Picasa, it literally takes me less than 30 seconds per photo to adjust to my liking.

Also, for whatever reason, colors on the original CRW file came out MUCH more vividly than the original JPEG. I found this to be true for nearly all of my photos regardless of settings.

 

[Scott Riemer]

Choyster, 2 things:

1. My question was more about how you get the CRW image to begin with?

2. You may not care, but your email address is showing in your screen shot. You may not want that in public view for whatever reason so I thought I'd point it out in case you accidentally overlooked it.

 

[Choyster]

Scott --

Thanks for the heads up. You got me all paranoid so I changed the screen shot.

As for the CRW file, once you load the hack onto your SD card, the camera automatically generates two files each time you hit the shutter: one in a JPG file and another in a CRW file. It's actually pretty easy.

Let me know if I can help with anything else.

 

[tripntx]

Choyster, thanks for showing us how to simply use picasa to correct photo's. I've owned Elements 5 for the last year, and haven't figured out how to do anything with it. Just downloaded Picasa2 from google and it is working wonders on my photo's.

Now, how do I correct backscatter?

 

[alcina]

Also, for whatever reason, colors on the original CRW file came out MUCH more vividly than the original JPEG. I found this to be true for nearly all of my photos regardless of settings.

This one is an easy one! RAW files are virtually all of the data that your camera records. It doesn't throw things away. JPEG files are files that have been culled down by your camera and quite a bit of information is simply tossed, never recorded and cannot be salvaged or manipulated.

Starting with more data will end in a better final image. You still need to get things "right" in camera, but you have a bigger "oops" zone AND, more importantly, you have tons more detail in the shadow and highlight areas in particular.

The downside to RAW files is that they take longer to write to the card as they are significantly larger, but fast paced shooting underwater isn't necessary in many situations and memory is cheap!

There's nothing wrong with jpeg shooting at all. You just need to be aware of what happens so you can decide which works best for you in the various scenarios you shoot in.

I personally find that shooting RAW has improved my workflow and is as fast, or faster, than working with jpeg files - for my needs. You do need to realise that when you shoot in RAW, all of those tweaks that you don't think about (contrast, white balance, saturation etc) will need to be done by hand. You develop an eye and a quick hand the more you shoot RAW, so it doesn't really take much extra time. Those are things that your camera, in its various modes & settings and with jpeg, simply decides for you - so "out of camera" doesn't mean untouched, it means that the camera made the final choices for you. Some models allow you some control over these things while shooting in jpeg, some models don't. The ones that do, simply apply your adjustments to the camera's "brain" and apply them to every image, regardless of it is the best decision for that image.

I do shoot jpegs with my Oly 720SW as there isn't a RAW option and jpegs to the XD card are already frustratingly slow - but it doesn't matter if my puppy knocks this thing out of my hand or into the ocean I also haven't used the hack for the Canon coz I couldn't get it to play nicely with my software (I don't use Picasa)...but if it would have, I would have kept it on for most things and sacrificed the write time to the card for the bigger, RAW file.

 

[Scott Riemer]

Scott --

Thanks for the heads up. You got me all paranoid so I changed the screen shot.

As for the CRW file, once you load the hack onto your SD card, the camera automatically generates two files each time you hit the shutter: one in a JPG file and another in a CRW file. It's actually pretty easy.

Let me know if I can help with anything else.

One other question, do you think I can do this with my A540? And where do I find the hack?

Thanks for the help.

 

[bpierce]

Alex,
I think the photo's are ok...better than my 'ol Sea & Sea MX-5. I just purchased a Canon A570 (still in the mail) and hope it turns out to be a decent camera as I have very little experience w/underwater photography and I will make the same photo comparisons.."how come my pictures look so crappy." Let us know how your pictures turn out.

 

[randini]

Also, for whatever reason, colors on the original CRW file came out MUCH more vividly than the original JPEG. I found this to be true for nearly all of my photos regardless of settings.

Just to add to Alcina's excellent explaination, when shooting in raw, it doesn't apply any of the in camera processing that's usually done for white balance, sharpening, noise reduction, etc. Hence it's also called a "digital negative".

What's happening is that in most cameras the sensor is reading 12bit per pixel. In a raw file, this 12bit of information is, more or less, just being dumped to the memory card. In a jpg file, however, the data has been processed and compressed by the camera, and is only recorded in 8bit. This is done to allow cameras to write the file to the memory card faster, fit more images on a given memory card (both since it's writing a much smaller file) and give "acceptable" out of camera results to the masses without having to "develop" the picture in prost processing.

What does the 12 vs 8 bit mean: 12bits means your data has a range of 2^12 (=4096) values, whereas in 8 bit it's only 2^8 (=256) values per pixel. So each pixel in a raw file contians 8x as much information to get better color rendition if you post process them right. Since nothing is free, the price of this raw data is larger files that take longer to write to the memory card, and the need to process pictures in a computer.

IIRC the chdk raw file isn't an "true" 12bit raw file, but a 10bit one (I may be wrong on this though). Still, 10bit is 4 times as much information as the 8 bit jpg and the file hasn't been manipulated by the camera's image processor.

 

[maged_mmh]

here is similar job done on PS CS2 ImageReady:
(sorry about the quality though, the camera was of very poor quality. just to show WB & saturation manipulation)