PING: Nikon DSLR owners

[Bonegavel]

I own a D70s and am going through the old RAW vs. JPG dilemma.

What format do you use and why?

[terpkristin]

Sorry I don't have an answer to your question, but I was wondering how you liked the Nikon D70 DSLR.

Will it use my standard Nikon (print) SLR lenses?

/tk

[Bonegavel]

I love this camera and it is still a good buy at around $649 for the body. It does a ton of things well. Newer and better cameras have come out since its release, but, the D200, for e.g., is $1699 for the body only. The extra grand can get you a bunch of lenses and the SB-600 (external flash).

My understanding is that any Nikon F lens mount compatible lens will fit the D70s and I believe that has been around for a while. The only problem with the old lenses is that you won't be able to take advantage of the through the lens metering (which is a big deal). But, if you have old manual 35mm Nikkor lenses.

[gstelmack]

JPEG will be more compatible and smaller (i.e. more per memory card). RAW is sometimes problematic (each manufacturer likes to add their own quirks to the format, making it not quite standard) but has the advantage of capturing every bit of possible detail in the picture. There is no compression, and can have extra color depth. My fuzzy memory on it is that it also includes information about what settings the picture was taken with so you can undo color correction or other bits (it's apparently much easier to do color adjustments and fixups on).

So your average home user is quite happy with JPEG, but for professional work RAW seems to be the only way to travel.

And one day I'll have money for a digital SLR. Still stuck with my Minolta DiMAGE which works great...

[Bonegavel]

JPEG will be more compatible and smaller (i.e. more per memory card). RAW is sometimes problematic (each manufacturer likes to add their own quirks to the format, making it not quite standard) but has the advantage of capturing every bit of possible detail in the picture. There is no compression, and can have extra color depth. My fuzzy memory on it is that it also includes information about what settings the picture was taken with so you can undo color correction or other bits (it's apparently much easier to do color adjustments and fixups on).


Yes, and I'm well versed on the details and have shot a great deal of RAW photos. I purchased Nikon Capture 4 which works with nefs superbly. This question came up recently between me and a friend who just bought a D50.

He is happy to snap away in jpg-land and I'm trying to convince him of the beauty of RAW. My philosophy is that I can always convert my RAW files into jpgs, but you can't go the other way, obviously.

However, RAW files are larger by at least 1-2 MBs over the best jpg the camera creates. I have a 1 GB card and it lets me shoot about 200 RAW shots or about 600 medium compressed jpgs. That is a huge but I can always get a large CF card and bump the numbers up accordingly. And storage space is cheap, so that is a super minor issue.

Workflow is a bigger issue. If I want to print out my RAW files, I have to first convert. Nikon Capture has a simple batch process, so I consider that a minor inconvenience.

Picasa now has support for D70s RAW files and it is a really nice program to create quick and dirty web pages of the images and that is a plus.

RAW acts as my digital negative and I can never ever alter the original data. A jpg can be accidentally altered and saved losing the original forever. This is minor because I have a decent folder structure where I separate the originals from any PP work.

There is a greater chance of jpgs being supported by a future OS in say 10-20 years than the RAW. I don't think Nikon is going anywhere and Microsoft has all ready created a power toy add on for XP that has a RAW viewer similar to the Windows Picture and Fax viewer. And while you can't alter the RAW file in this, you can at least save it as a jpg.

Still, in the back of my mind I would love to think that I could get away with only shooting jpg and still have piece of mind. There is the school of thought "Shoot it right the first time" and you don't have to worry about needing to fix any problems later (which is a very handy feature of RAW), but I am no professional and even though a great deal of my shots do not need Post work, RAW is a nice crutch to be able to go back and "better" fix any oops.

[Craptacular]

Ken Rockwell has a great site for anyone involved in or looking to start in digital photography. Here is his take on the RAW vs JPG issue:
hxxp://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/raw.htm

I have a D70, and have never shot in RAW. I'll probably try futzing with it at some point, but don't really see the need. I have a friend who has a photography business on the side, and he shoots in RAW sometimes, but he's looking to make large landscape and nature prints he can sell. If you're just shooting for fun, is it worth all the extra time RAW requires?

TK, as bonegavel said, you can use the old Nikon F-mount (bayonet mount) lenses. I actually have a couple of my dad's old lenses, which is one of the reasons I went with Nikon over Canon. I don't use them much since I have the 18-70 lens that came with the camera and also bought a 70-300 lens afterwards, but it's nice to have the ability to use old lenses, especially if they are specialty lenses (like a fish-eye).