Nikon Speedlights - which one should i get?

  • We are currently upgrading MFK. thanks! -neo
nice, thats a great pic, and a good tip to get the right metering. i like to do portraits of people too, and i'm not sure if theyll be patient enough while i run back and forth trying to get the right inputs for the flash lol.

now about shooting in RAW, that all is mindboggling to me at this point. i dont understand it at all and dont see what its used for. do you have a good link on RAW for dummies? :)
 
Shooting in RAW is really simple, and 100% necessary for "pro quality" photos. There are all sorts of articles out there. Go the the library, they have all sorts of books. That's what I did.

RAW simply means that, well, the photo is in it's "raw" unprocessed format. When you shoot in jpeg the image is saved with the settings that were on the camera when you shot it. It's nice for a point and shoot, and it keeps the file small, but you cannot go back later and edit the photos white balance, exposure, etc.

Shooing in RAW is just a setting on the camera. Where it comes into play is after, when you edit the photo (I use the cheap PhotoShop Elements).

The downside is that you need to process your RAW file and then save it as a tiff or jpeg before printing or uploading to the internet.

A bit technical - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raw_image_format

Here's the same photo as I shot it, before editing the RAW. (I shoot in RAW and jpeg, so I get an image I can use immediately if I want, and can then go process the RAW file later). You can see the white balance is way off.

4438684292_643f3b0ecb_b.jpg
 
see what i dont understand is, why cant you just edit the jpeg for exposure, white balance, etc, in photoshop? is it because this degrades the photo quality and RAW doesnt?
 
When you shoot jpeg the photo is automatically processed with the white balance and exposure settings you had at the time.

With RAW, the file is unprocessed, so you can go in and tweak these settings.

I'm sure others can explain it much better than I. It's not that it degrades the quality, it's that you physically cannot. The information is "frozen" at the settings you had with jpeg.

That jpeg I uploaded is 500kb in size. The RAW file size 7.55mb. So about 15 times more information in a RAW file vs. jpeg.
 
A jpeg image out of the camera has already been "processed" beyond adjusting white balance. That doesn't mean there aren't work arounds though. ;)
 
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