Re: "Raw" for dummies ?
Judy wrote: >> ... I probably
wouldn't have opened it even if it were, because my experience with the
digital books has been so grim.
Believe me, I know exactly how that feels. I wrote The Photographer's Guide to the Digital Darkroom because I couldn't find a book to use in my university classes and workshops. I wanted to pull together the information, sort it out, and establish a vocabulary that makes sense to photographers. Though I worked hard to keep the material conversational, I have absolutely no doubt that it remains a good cure for insomnia! I think that if you "cherry pick" the information you need from it, reading just the chapters--or portions of chapters--that address the question-at-hand, you'll find it a useful resource. >> However, at your recommendation, I might try again. I might even be able to still get the CAA discount (some houses offer it for a month). Is yours one of the Allworth books also in the Watson Guptill catalog? (I have it around here somewhere & will check.) I'm not sure how Allworth is marketing the book. Candidly, I've been hugely disappointed in their marketing and am distressed to hear that they were are CAA and the book didn't make their table. Geez. Buy a copy, and if it doesn't work for you, let me know and I'll refund the purchase. No questions asked. What would be very helpful to me is to hear any criticism or critique, suggestions for how it can be improved. If I ever update it, or try my hand at another book, your feedback would be valuable. As to Raw: There are a few basic concepts to keep in mind. First and foremost, all pixels are not created equally (in fact, pixels are only abstractions, mathematical concepts). There are a staggering number of variables that ultimately affect the quality of pixels and an image file, made either by a scanner or digital camera. As you know, when shooting Raw files you must process through a Raw converter. Photoshop CS2 ships with Camera Raw, which is very good; in part because it is designed to process trace pixel information in the highlights rather than discarding it. This can really help with high contrast scenes, like the one you mention in another email. By using a good digital camera, learning how to process Raw files properly, combined with a bit of Photoshop technique, you can produce excellent image files with a tonal scale that is at least equal to--and will sometim es exceed--traditional color negative film. Shooting Jpeg, by comparison, is more like shooting color slide film. I like Jpeg, and use it a lot, but not for image files that I think might be important and that I want to exercise more processing control over. One important difference between Jpeg and Raw is bit depth. Bit depth is simply a measure of how much binary information can be stored in each individual pixel of an image file. Whatever bit depth you camera is capable of is preserved in Raw, but is downsampled to 8-bit for Jpeg. By example, if all the binary information (all those 0's and 1's) in an 8-bit file were to fit perfectly on a single page, a 16-bit file would be a book 256 pages long! Lastly, for now, is the importance of learning to read histograms. You cannot--on any digital camera that I know of--trust the image you see on the camera's LCD screen. At best, you have to treat that representation like a bad Polaroid. However, if your camera displays a histogram for the image--Raw or Jpeg--you can predict what kind of image file you'll have to work with. This isn't difficult to do, it just takes a bit of practice. Let me know if you have any questions. By the way, I don't know if this interests you but I'll be teaching a workshop on this stuff at Anderson Ranch this summer. Bill Kennedy Austin, Texas
|