Questions about RAW on a Canon S50

[Ardiem]

I decided to take some pictures in RAW format and when I got home and transfered the files onto my comp I checked the resolution in IrfanView and it turns out they are in 640X480. The file sizes were big, around 4 mbs or so but I was wondering what I was doing wrong? I want the resolution to be larger and when I tried expanding it the picture become all sorts of ugly.

Help?

[piper]

You obviously have the RAW plugin that allows Irfanview to display your RAW files. I also was surprised that the full RAW file was only being displayed at 640X480. It is only handy for quick reviews. In order to see them in higher resolution you will have to convert them to .jpg first with FileViewer. Sorta sucks because the conversion is a bit tedious and slow. That seems to be the trade-off to being able to have the flexibility offered by RAW.

[Ardiem]

Thanks for the reply.

I tried converting them through irfanview but they still came out in 640X480 reso. I even tried enlarging them while converting and lots of artifacts showed, just like expanding a small jpeg.

I'll have to update the RAW converter that came with the camera. I have an older version on my comp. Anyone know a link that has the most recent version?

What about fileviewer?

[Pewterpez]

fileviewer is a program that came with the s50, it's called "FileViewerUtility" and should be in the canon utilities folder in your start menu if you installed the cd from canon...

it's a fairly fast image viewer that'll process your raws into jpg's...

you could also use the zoombrowser also supplied by canon for converting the raw to jpg's

[Guillermo Freige]

The 640x480 JPEG showed and extracted by InfranView is the embeded JPEG thumbnail included by the camera in every RAW file, not the RAW itself. This is the same embeded image you check when you review and zoom the image in-camera (you will see the compresion artifacts and low resolution and say "hey, where's my RAW file?? :) )

To obtain the real image, you need to process the image with the Canon FileViewerUtility, or (I think) ZoomBrowser, or better yet, using the much flexible and faster BreezeBrowser, by BreezeSystems.

Also, if you are shooting in RAW, it has no sense to transform it to a JPEG. You can shoot directly in JPEG in the first place, and avoid the conversion process.
To obtain the best results you must convert it to a 16-bit TIFF, because the RAW file has a 12-bit depth, and
the JPEG only 8-bit depth.
After all the image postprocesing in Photoshop, you can save the finished image as a JPEG, and get a much better image quality.

[sean000]

Guillermo Freige wrote:
The 640x480 JPEG showed and extracted by InfranView is the embeded JPEG thumbnail included by the camera in every RAW file, not the RAW itself. This is the same embeded image you check when you review and zoom the image in-camera (you will see the compresion artifacts and low resolution and say "hey, where's my RAW file?? :) )

To obtain the real image, you need to process the image with the Canon FileViewerUtility, or (I think) ZoomBrowser, or better yet, using the much flexible and faster BreezeBrowser, by BreezeSystems.

Also, if you are shooting in RAW, it has no sense to transform it to a JPEG. You can shoot directly in JPEG in the first place, and avoid the conversion process.
To obtain the best results you must convert it to a 16-bit TIFF, because the RAW file has a 12-bit depth, and
the JPEG only 8-bit depth.
After all the image postprocesing in Photoshop, you can save the finished image as a JPEG, and get a much better image quality.

Guillermo
S50 owner and RAW shooter.



Actually, there are several advantages to shooting in RAW even if you covert them to JPEG. I've done a lot of experiments contrasting images shot in JPEG with those shot in RAW and converted to JPEG (shooting same subject at the same time). The converted RAW images usually come out a little sharper...possibly because I'm telling the converter to use the least lossy compression. It only makes a difference if you crop down to a smaller portion or really blow up the image.

A better reason to shoot in RAW is so you have the option of making a high quality TIFF of a great image if you want. The only reason I'd use a TIFF is if I'm planning to do a lot of processing on the image, and I want to be able to work with the most data possible. Even then, I'll usually work with the smaller JPEG. The TIFF would be nice if you intend to use your images in professional publishing. But the TIFF does come in handy if you have an image that is really over or under exposed. Sometimes you can adjust the levels and get better results with the TIFF than you can with the JPEG.

If you never tweak your images, shoot in JPEG. Otherwise, why not shoot in RAW?

[Pewterpez]

sean000, which processing program do you use to convert from raw to jpeg or tiff?? (just curious)

because I know that breezebrowser has a few examples of compared images between "out-of-camera jpeg", their own processed jpeg, and other software's jpeg.

So apparently the processing program'll determine the final product :P (btw, breezebrowser's combined setting on conversion is very cool)