Raw - nef format

Hi, there. I have bought a new D70s, and have some questions:
- When does it pay to use the NEF format? The editing possibilities seem to
be similar to JPG?
- Which program do you recommend to edit NEF files?
Aaron

On Wed, 04 May 2005 08:10:25 GMT, "Aaron Blacksmith"
wrote:

Hi, there. I have bought a new D70s, and have some questions:
- When does it pay to use the NEF format? The editing possibilities seem to
be similar to JPG?

NEF is Nikon's RAW format

Advantage of RAW:

* Slightly better latitude on RAW's (translates to you not needing to
be quite so critical with the exposure value). Eg, it's possible to
make exposure adjustments when importing the RAW without significant
loss of data. With a JPEG, some of this data has already been
discarded.

* White balance choice can be overridden/changed when importing. With
a JPEG it's too late - the image was coded using whatever white
balance was in use at the time and some data may have been discarded
as a result. (Okay if you got it right, but often you don't).

* The RAW importer allows you to make adjustments to compensate for
vignetting that may of occurred. This is more difficult to do to a
jpeg.

* The RAW file has no compression artifacts that are present in the
JPEG, thus allowing editing without further quality losses.

* As technology improves, RAW importers will get better. It's quite
possible that in a few years time you can revisit your old RAWs with
new software and get even better images from them. Previously encoded
JPEGs don't really offer this possibility.

Disadvantages of RAW:
* Require conversion to a more standard JPEG or TIFF at some point
prior to printing or display on third party hardware. Eg, you must
have a workflow, and this workflow can take more effort than ones
involving just JPEGs.

* Are much bigger files than JPEG, so use up more card space.

* Are proprietary format. Some people worry that after the third world
war, the survivors will be too stupid to work out how to read rows of
RGB data from a RAW file, but somehow be capable of devising a
solution to decoding a JPEG file who's encoder used Discrete Cosine
Transformation, Quantization Tables, Zig Zag Scan, Differential Pulse
Code Modulation on DC component, Run Length Encoding on AC components
and a splash of Entropy Encoding before it was written to the file.
You might be able to tell, I don't buy this argument... and don't much
care because I'll be dead anyway - and if I'm not, this'll be the
least of my worries.

- Which program do you recommend to edit NEF files?

Photoshop. NOT Nikon's capture rubbish.

Currently you can't 'save' an edited NEF in photoshop (probably not a
bad idea really), best to save work-in-progress or masters as PSD
files (photoshop's native format) and stuff ready to print as TIFF or
JPEG.

--
Owamanga!
http://www.pbase.com/owamanga