10D RAW Questions

[Jay J]

I'm a wedding photographer and I just started experimenting with raw (not at a wedding, just around the studio). It's not that much slower and I can definately use it in our wedding coverage. It takes care of the bad color casts we always have to deal with by adjusting white balance in Photoshop CS Raw's software.

My questions are this:
1) Why does the image go from being roughly an 11 x 17 when shot as a jpeg to a 8.5 x 12 when shot raw?
2) I'm shooting raw with the corresponding jpeg image being the largest possible. It's my understanding that the jpeg is imebedded in the raw file but I don't see it there when I open it up in the browser. Am I setting something wrong on the camera?
3) Contrary to everthing I'm reading it seems like raw, in some shots, has more noise shadows then when I shoot the image in jpeg. Is this possible or am I nuts?
4) When I shoot raw I set the camera to AWB, image capture to raw then I go in the custom settings and set the jpeg size to the largest. Are there any other settings I should be touching? I'm assuming that raw ignores the settings you have on the camera for sharpening,contrast etc.

I find Photoshops CS raw software to be very quick, easy to use and integrates smoothly with PS.

Thanks,

Jay
www.julianophotography.com (http://www.julianophotography.com/)

[Scottes]

1) It's just the DPI setting. It means nothing really, until you go to print it. When you pull up the RAW converter in PS one of the boxes at the bottom should say "240 dpi" I believe. Change it to what you wish - I think JPG defaults to 180dpi. Personally I ignore it until it's time to print, then I set the DPI through Image... Resize... And uncheck the Resample box.

[tim]

2) On the 20D it creates a RAW and a JPG image on my CF card. I believe there's a small jpg embedded in the RAW, which is entirely different.
3) The camera probably does a bit of noise reduction on JPGs, whereas RAW is completely unprocessed.
4) You're assumptions are correct - the RAW is unprocessed, the JPG probably will use the settings that are active for the profile you're using (sharpness, contrast, etc).

CS RAW seems pretty damn slow at times to me, C1 Pro is a lot quicker but I find I have less power with it. That could be because I read a whole book on PS CS RAW processing...

[jbradc]

2.) On the 10D the JPG is embedded in the RAW file and must be extracted from the file using the Canon software that came with the camera (FileViewerUtility). Just select the RAW file(s) you want and right click, choose "Extract Save JPEG...". You will then get a dialog box where you can set the options/destination folder.

[Jesper]

1) The only thing that's important is the size in pixels, which is 3072 x 2048 in large JPEG and RAW mode. You see a different size in inches because the DPI (dots per inch) setting is different. The DPI setting is irrelevant to the quality or size of the image.

2) Yes, the JPEG file is embedded. That means you get only a CRW file, which contains the RAW data as well as a JPEG. The previous poster explained how you can save the JPEG in a separate file with File Viewer Utility.

4) White balance and the parameter settings (sharpness, contrast, saturation) do not have any effect on the RAW data. They are, however, used for the embedded JPEG file. Also, your RAW conversion software might look at the settings and use them as "default" values when processing the RAW file, so you might see some effect of the settings in your RAW conversion software.

[Jay J]

Scotts, Tim, JBradc & Jesper,

Wow! Thanks! Between the (4) of you every question I had was answered. What more can I say. Thanks so much for the advice, it was very helpful. :D

Jay J