To gypsygirl58: RAW

[Propofol]

Thanks for your kind comments, Tina!

I'm a big fan of RAW. As I understand it, the RAW format varies between cameras, but is a pixel-by-pixel representation of what the camera's sensor saw at the moment of exposure. It is entirely uncompressed (the usual format, JPEG, is usually very economically compressed) and it does not include any adjustments for white balance.

Although the files are HUGE (typically 20Mb per shot for me), I shoot almost exclusively in RAW. There is the least data lost this way, but best of all you are much more free to post-process the images. Clever programs like Adobe Photoshop CS2 (or their trial version of the new product Lightroom - check Adobe's website) support most cameras' RAW formats and allow quite extensive adjustment of exposure with much greater precision than changing lighting levels in JPEGs. The downside is you need quite a bit of hard disk room to store the images!

In this case it was useful to shoot in RAW because the exposure, as I shot it, was not quite what I wanted. I used Lightroom to adjust the exposure a bit, while keeping the well-lit main parts of the Opera House's "sails" from being over-exposed.

Hope this helps. The best thing is probably to have a play with the format and post-processing. It's a little bit more hassle but I tip you'll be well rewarded for it.

[gypsygirl58]

Hi Simon,
Thanks heaps for all of your information! Sounds good, I'll have to have a play around like you suggest, the only way I'm going to learn! Thanks again and Have a great New Year!!
Cheers Tina :-)