Powershot S45 - RAW & AVI?

[mark4man]

People,

Sold my Nikon CoolPix 4300 beacuse it couldn't take movies w/ audio.

I wanted to move to a Powershot A80 because it could, but the A80 doesn't support an uncompressed file format.

So I have two questions:

1) Is it true that the Powershot S45 is the only Canon DigiCam that does both (RAW format & movies w/ sound)?

2) Is the RAW format supported by Canon universal in nature (I noticed that Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro, etc. all open .raw files. Same animal?)

Thanks very much,

mark4man

[PeterS45]

Answer 1> The other Canons with RAW & Movie with sound are S50, G3, G5 and the new Pro 1 and S1 (and some older cameras like the G2).

Answer 2> the Canon RAW-format has the extension .CRW and can be opened with Photoshop etc. when you have the plug-in for that format. You can also use Canons own software or BreezeBrowser.

[mike j]

I still find it odd that people will choose a digicam on the strength of it's movie capability !

The quality of the movies these cameras produce is relatively poor with a low frame rate and poor sound quality.

Whilst I have to admit that it's a great gimmick and very convenient to have a movie mode on my IXUS400, I can't help thinking that you'd be better off with a digital camcorder ?

In terms of picture and sound quality, there really is no contest.

:)

[PeterS45]

I still find it odd that people will choose a digicam on the strength of it's movie capability !



It's even worse than that....... In the opinion of a friend of mine the 300D must be a low quality digicam because it hasn't got AVI-capability and even worse ( :roll: ) he wasn't able to use the LCD as a preview-screen.....

[mike j]

:? :lol:

[mark4man]

Guys,

Thanks.

I'm now a bit skeptical of Canon's RAW format (due to the fact that a plug-in is necessary.) I suppose I could use the plug-in to open the .CRW in Photoshop; & then convert to .RAW from there.

I wouldn't concern yourselves so much with my movie preferences in a DigiCam...it's only for *convenience* (if I'm gonna have moving video capabilities in a DigiCam, they might as well contain audio.)

All I want is a lossless still image format & movies with sound (even if the movies are crappy quality.

Thanks again,

mark4man

[PeterS45]

Guys,

Thanks.

I'm now a bit skeptical of Canon's RAW format (due to the fact that a plug-in is necessary.) I suppose I could use the plug-in to open the .CRW in Photoshop; & then convert to .RAW from there.

I wouldn't concern yourselves so much with my movie preferences in a DigiCam...it's only for *convenience* (if I'm gonna have moving video capabilities in a DigiCam, they might as well contain audio.)

All I want is a lossless still image format & movies with sound (even if the movies are crappy quality.

Thanks again,

mark4man

I'm not sure if there's any RAW-format that doesn't need a plug-in. Nikon has its own format and so does Minolta. All other uncompressed formats are TIFF's and that will cost you a fortune on memory cards.

I know I'm very happy with the Canon format, and I use BreezeBrowser for the conversion and that won't cost you an arm and a leg.

[mark4man]

PeterS45,

So...this software..."BreezeBrowser" . . .

1) Is this Canon software (i.e., packaged with the camera)?

2) What is the quality of the conversion? I. e., I know I can trust Photoshop for quality conversions, but what typically happens? Does BreezeBrowser convert from .CRW to .RAW, in order to then open & edit the image in any supporting app? Does it only alter the header; & not change any pixel data in the conversion?

(Sorry to be so persistent...but I really want this camera...& I want to be able to shoot uncompressed images & then get them unscathed into Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro.)

Thanks again very much,

mark4man

[dtrayers]

RAW files have to potential to yield a higher quality picture as your workign with 12-bits of data, not 8, but it take a little more effort.

Here's a site with a lot of info on shooting in RAW mode:

http://www.outbackphoto.com/handbook/rawfileprocessing.html

To answer your questions: The software packaged with the camera is called Zoombrowser. It works well, but the interface is a little cumbersom and it's a little slow. Breezebrowser uses the same Canon DLL files as the Canon converter. Chris Breeze developed Breezebrowser using the Canon SDK. It's just a much better interface and has lots of extras, like noise reduction and linear mode. It will also build a web page in various formats. BB will save inTIFF, JPG, JPG2000, or PNG. Both 8-bit and 16-bit format. And it has a batch mode.

If you have Photoshop CS or Adobe Camera Raw for PS7, then you can use that (I don't know if ACR supports the S45, but I'm sure CS does). However, irrespective of the image format, Photoshop will not read all the EXIF header data as Canon strictly adheres to some standard that Adobe doesn't (or something like that). The result is that not all of the EXIF data is read by PS (like the ISO for my SD100 doesn't show in the EXIF information, but it does for my 300D). ACR and PS CS have a better interface than the Canon routines for manipulating CRW files.

Any conversion doesn't change the RAW file. It's read only. You have to save it in another format.

I hardly ever shoot in JPG mode anymore.