Has to be done - catching loads of these beautiful little spring flowers sprouting up all over the place. Here's a few from last weekend, snapped at Heathfield Gardens near to Croydon.

All with the K7 and Tamron Adaptall 135mm f2.8, most shot at f4.0 or f5.6, ISO 200.


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Thanks for checking them out Nigel

Makes sense. It doesn't sound like there's any RAW conversion going on at all - just file browsing really. To the OP, if he's used to using the camera custom menus to optimise photos from the camera then I'd suggest Pentax Digital Camera Utility as a good first starting point to RAW working.

Its not laid out the same as other RAW software (for example with many key adjustment controls together on a single page) ... instead PDCU has multiple panels that more resemble the camera LCD menus with a specific type of edit on each (eg Highlight / Shadow / white balance / colour fine tune.

So if you're used to using the camera 'panels' for JPEG output control the software is quite similiar in many ways, and also offers up a few extra high quality features not on the cameras. Also you can output to 16bit TIFF, and so retain full quality for further through an editing chain.

Love the colourful, swirly, impressionistic water shots - great reflections, well observed, framed and strong presentations. Beautiful!

I love the strong jagged lines and the way the roof cuts into the sky so sharply, and the highest peak of roof is placed just perfectly off-centre. The deep blues and bright creamy roof line are a great contrast.

I would give some low shadow boost (to the darkest tones) to bring in some lightening under the overhang and darkest parts of the glass - the very bright sunlight suggests to me that these areas would be brighter with reflected light. Also there's a couple of lighter round circles on the upper right sky area, which could be removed easily with the healing brush or somthing like that.

There's been a reasonable balance of views for both formats - but rather less detail on what specifically it is about each format that someone should consider and weigh up. We still don't really have a clear set of definitions to draw on of who & what would be most suited to each format.

I don't think we need worry so much now on the old ideas about file sizes and storage space, reading speeds and so on .... the technology has moved on way beyond those issues really.

For me now, I look at each individual image (mostly shooting RAW+ now) and make some judgements about the actual content of what I see. I think mostly about the dynamic range and how high the contrast is. If, for example, I have deep blacks in shadows and need that pulling up, to reduce contrast, then RAW will give me more for that - I know because the sliders respond differently, giving more 'latitude' and a finer range of control. I also know that if I need more than about 1.5 stops of mid-tone brightening, then also I will go for RAW - this will allow better control over the white-point and, keeping nicer highlight tone as I pull up brightness. With JPEG the brightness values will bunch up and compress towards the upper end and push the whitepoint upwards as well more. And finally, with RAW I can get a better spread of low-tone contrast using the 'Fill Shadows' slider (Sagelight) with 'add contrast' active - with JPEG this will cause the blacks to bunch up quickly at the bottom.

So for me the decision is based on processing experience and remembering how the adjustments will act on these different kinds of image data. In many cases I will find an image that has a more limited spread of tones, lower contrast, and colours already very good - then I am happy to make just some slight adjustments to the JPEG, and save the RAW conversion step.

You should be selling those cameras doubleD, the shots really show it off well -it all just oozes quality with those lenses. I love seeing Pentax gear (and the high quality compatible lenses) well displayed, thanks very for showing this!

Thats my NR first choice, very good value. It works in Photoshop & Elements in 16bit mode - in PS you can use it on a layer in 16bit mode and mask out areas - great flexibility.

Thats a very atmospheric photo, great backlight and mysterious haze. A well deserved win. You've place the 'horizon' beautifully (isn't it always very hard to know how far up to cut off trees?!). And a good performance from the M.

I like the nice tight compositions you've made there, and you've certainly found quite a few interesting objects around that old town.

I'd caution on that approach - converting in camera results in an 8bit image only - both TIFF & JPEG, and there's nothing between them. You've lost all the 16bit advantage straight away. Sky textures are a bit rough and patchy even on TIFF (just like a JPEG with no NR) and you can't get it back. To be frank, you might as well have shot camera JPEGs in the first place.

If you want the absolute best quality the camera can deliver, and need a good amount of processing 'latitude' to achieve the result needed, then RAW and computer 'development' of RAW is the only way to go. If you don't have these needs as critical, and you're able to make good choices on the camera settings for your particular scenes and subjects, then stick to camera JPEGs.

OP, Aura, tell us a bit about the sort of image adjustments you have already been doing, and in what software.... for example, do you change brightness, contrast, white balance? And what other kinds of changes do you make to your shots? And I'm assuming up to now you've been using camera JPEG files straight from the camera?