File format confusion

[Clintr]

Hi all,
Just got a new Dimage 7i and trying to figure differences and uses of the RAW vs FINE formats. can anyone help?
TIA :?

[macleod76]

Just got a new Dimage 7i and trying to figure differences and uses of the RAW vs FINE formats. can anyone help?

Here it is straight from the digicam dictionary:

RAW - RAW files basically hand the raw unprocessed data - at 12 bits per channel - from the camera’s imaging chip to your computer. Lossless compression is applied to reduce filesize slightly without compromising any quality.

Fine would refer to the Jpg compresion size. With Fine jpg compression, you have less loss of pic quality, at the expense of size on card.

[Clintr]

thx

[elied]

To elucidate a bit more - I use Fine for pictures of my grandchildren, action shots, ereryday photography. The quality is excellent, file size small and write time to the card almost instantaneous. I use RAW for those special "arty" shots that I may decide to print as large as 12 X 16 inches (A3), because with RAW I have maximum control of the final product since I will do the manipulation of the image (tone, contrast, color balence, saturation, sharpening, etc.) in a post-processing application which does it better and allows me more control, rather than letting the camera make the decisions. The down side is that the file is 4.5 times larger and with the 7i (as opposed to the 7hi) there is a 10 to 20 second period when the camera is inoperable while the file is written to the card - the actual time depends on the type of card.

By the way, if you want to go the RAW way, there are several free programs for converting the RAW file that do a better job than Divu. I use Rawdeal to convert to a 48 bit tif and then process the image in Picture Window Pro.

Hope this helps,
Elie

[photo_mage]

Another advantage of the Raw format is that it is not a writeable format for image editing programs. They force you to save as a different format such as tiff or jpeg. This way you can't accidentally overwrite your "original" file. Also, the color balance, sharpness, and other changes you make in DIVU do not change the actual pixels of the image, only the way they are rendered into the application. So, you can change the settings as much as you want without introducing any mathematically induced changes to the original pixel data. Not such a big deal for most, but for those who do a lot of image manipulation, or who experiment a lot with their images, this can be a nice safety net.

[Clintr]

Thanks folks
Just started to play with these formats and I am beginning to see what you all mean.
Appreciate the help