It was a nice spring morning that Sunday in May, 1980. My hunting dog and I got up early and headed out to Sauvie Island (largest island in the Columbia River), where I often worked my hunting dog. All of a sudden, there it was!

I knew instantly that the mountain was blowing big time. Loading my dog into my rig, I checked and found that I had a camera with me with only two frames of film left on a roll of 35mm. Driving a short distance, I found this site on the island that offered a unique setting. I got out of my old International Scout, setup my tripod and took two quick frames of film.

I have always loved this image in how it shows natures complete extremes. The trees had not yet leafed out; however, they were budding with the essence of spring. The cattle grazing, the volcano, the reflection in the small lake, all come together.

As always, comments and/or questions are more than welcome.

GoDaddy hosts my site - its not the host its the web master that counts - if you are going to build your own site thats great I couldn't but I found a guy.......Go daddy

Hello fellow Hoggers. As some of you know, I'm an old film guy. The other day I was digging through my cedar chest and run across my old Argus C3, "the brick". It brought back some fond memories for me. I decided to dust it off and take the ol' black box out for a shoot. Then I realized I didn't have a light meter anymore, poo. :(
So I went on Ebay and found 2 of the little ones that go on top into the hot shoe. Won't know if they work for sure until I get them in the mail. But I'm keeping my fingers crossed.
Then I'll be off to take the brick for a spin.
So fellow Hoggers, how often do you dust off the ol' manual camera?

Thanks for the info.
I have figured how to set my Nikon to take RAW images, but I can't get the Nikon software to cooperate. I can't even open the thumbnails, but I'll keep trying.
Bob
quote=genepoole]Nevada Chuck is right.

I've been lurking for quite some time and these RAW issues, even though answered very accurately most of the time, have never directed to this web site for complete understanding.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raw_image_format

This gives a very straight forward explanation of what and how RAW works in conjunction with almost any camera.

Hope this helps fill in the gaps.

Lee

You are exactly wrong in your understanding of RAW vs. JPEG, or some other format (TIFF, etc.)

When you load you RAW shots into your computer, load them into a RAW converter (Photoshop and Lightroom do this automatically, as will some other RAW editors). Then, AFTER you've made some of the global changes that you might want to make, you move the file over into your regular editor for further modification, if any, after first duplicating the file on a new layer. THEN, when you're ready to close the file, do a "SAVE AS." This is where you change the extension of the file name to "JPG". YOU NEVER ACTUALLY CHANGE THE RAW FILE.

This last factor, together with the ability to change some of the global settings, such as WB, is why you shoot in RAW.

I have a Nikon D3100 which lets me take a picture in Raw and Jpeg mode at the same time. What is really neat about Raw files is that it contains every little detail about the picture that you just took. Think of this as "a film negative" which you can always go back to. This Raw file can be used over and over again and no digital loss occurs. Every time you open and work on a Jpeg, you lose digital information. I usually throw away mediocre Raw files and just keep my Jpegs. But if I happen to take a picture that is really worth keeping and working on, I keep that Raw file forever. If all you do is take pictures that you never "fix", I would suggest to shoot in Jpeg mode. Hope this helps.

Read the previous posts. We talked about why you would use RAW files vs jpg. The main reason is that jpg is a compressed form of the image and is typically a smaller file because of that. But you lose data which limits what you can do with the photo in post-processing. Example, I take an image and it has a bluish tint. You can do some correcting with a jpg, but with a RAW file you can easily adjust the white balance to exactly the temperature you want with no loss in quality.

Therefore, if you have the software to process the RAW images and big enough card memory, always shoot in RAW. You'll be much happier with your results.

Thanks.
I did some looking, and with the Nikon the RAWs are called NEFs.
Frankly, I've never heard of RAW files, and I don't understand what their purpose is.According to my Nikon owner's manual I need my computer to view these files.
Still researching.

The camera can be set to shoot in RAW instead. This can be thought of as a "digital negative" (sort of) as it is a full capture of what the camera sensor picks up. The Jpg that the camera renders is a subset of that. There's more detail in the RAW and much more to work with if there are corrections that need to be made later.