Camera Utility 4

Hi all,

Can you help me please. How do you get ANY of the fuctions/radio buttons to become live

I can load an image into the middle, and then open up Laboratory, but then nothing?

Thanks and regards

geoff

Laboratory works only with RAW images. If you shoot JPEG, it can't do anything, since the JPEG is already "developped" in camera.

Thanks for replying Yves.
I guess it is no use to me at all then, at least I know why it does not work now. Still, I have some software called "Faststone" which is very good.

To introduce myself to you, I have bought a K-x about a month ago with the kit 28-55 and 50-200 Zoom, and today obtained the 55-300 Zoom, as I would like to use it whist birding. I also hope to try some Astro stuff in due course as well.

It is my first DSLR. My old film camera was a Minolta ST100, so a first for Pentax for me.

Kind regards to all.

Geoff

Or, Geoff, you could set your K-x to take RAW images, as I have done.

True darkskies,true, although I was hoping to get to learn about my camera first, as I am a bit raw
Do RAW shots look the same as JPEG when uploaded to a computer? Is it just that they can then be "tweaked" and then saved as JPEG?
Is there then a case for always shooting in RAW?

Geoff

I'm sure you will get varied answers to this one, Geoff. I've only been doing this since last Tuesday, so I can't give you a full answer. It says I'm a Site Veteran but that's a laugh!

However, I just switched straight to RAW (DNG) as I had been led to believe that this is the best way to achieve best quality images. I haven't used the K-x in any other way. I have been extremely pleased with the results after I have performed some post processing in Lightroom. The RAW images do look pretty similar to jpegs, but you will always have to do a little work to get a good result, but the results should be better. I guess sometimes it's not particularly noticeable, but I reckon it's good practice all the same. Besides, trying to make the quality as good as possible should be an aim, I think.

The files will be quite large, by the way.

I'll now stand aside for someone to explain the technicalities......

The RAW files contain more details and info than the JPEG files. RAW files are 12 to 24 bit (depending upon the camera model) while JPEG files are only 8 bit. 8 bit means there is "only 256 steps of red, 256 stepes of green and 256 steps of blue which are combined to give the "full" viewable spectrum. On the other hand, a 12 bit image contains 4096 steps of each primary colours, so you can get smoother images due to the "gap" between each step being smaller. Editing images with a higher bit depth will extract the maximum amount of details available in your pictures.

For example, since you like birding, when you have a large expanse of sky, the JPEG files will often have some banding in the sky because each different steps in the cyan are too coarse. The RAW file with 4096 steps (for a 12 bit file) will avoid that problem. Once the file is properly edited and tweaked, you can convert it to JPEG and have a smooth looking sky.

Thanks guys.