My cat as just brought us a most lovely present (I think not), a young fledgling starling, but bloody cats, she as been sat on the table for the last weeks watching and squeaking at the birds in the garden, today she got out and did what cats do, killed.

I will try and keep her in until the rest ahave flown the nest, but she gets out through the fan light window and with the weather being so warm I can't have the windows closed all the time. Oh and she does ahve a bell on her colllar, but but gets her prey.

Amur LeopardCanon 350D f5.6 @ 1/500sec 100-400mm Canon IS zoom lens

The perceived wisdom that if you’re after the best quality output from your digital files then you should be recording your images as RAW files. As I said in my previous post RAW is not an acronym but in fact is a good description of the file itself.  

It is a simply just what it says a RAW file has no parameters applied to it. These files have a huge amount of flexibility and when processing you can alter these parameters without losing the original data. If you shoot RAW you are recording a file with a huge amount of potential, whereas a JPEG has far less flexibility, unfortunately a RAW file must be processed.  

RAW files allow to change the parameters such as brightness, white balance, picture style, hue saturation and sharpness, while you can alter the individual red, green and blue colour channels.  

If your camera has the ability then I recommend that you shoot in RAW format, unfortunately these are larger files then JPEG so you are able to store less on your memory cards, but it is worth it. The cost of memory cards has drastically fallen over the last few years, so have a few spare in your bag.  

In the next article, I will explain the digital work flow.

Siberian Tiger
Canon 350D f5 @ 1/400sec: Canon 100 – 400mm IS zoom lens

This article will either be useful to you or be no benefit whatsoever. The taking of the picture is normally the easy part you point the camera at what you want to take a picture a picture off and press the button and you have a perfect image (we hope).

But have you ever considered the format of the file, probably not, that is unless you a more advanced photographer, many people are just concerned with talking the picture and seeing what results we have achieved when we down load it our computers.

However, there a number of formats that is available to us;

JPEG of JPG: Every one of us will be familiar with this format it what every camera and every piece of software recognises, developed by the Joint Photographic Experts Group hence the term JPEG. The format uses what is know as a ‘lossy’ compression method. Every time you open and save the image some information is lost. Don’t worry normal viewing will not degrade the image. However, if you keep editing the image eventually it will degrade to such an extent that that it will not able to be used.

Tagged Image File Format (TIFF): This is the most universally recognised image format, most the of big printing companies, magazines and stock agencies require their images in this format. It’s a lossless format in that no matter how times the file is worked it will not degrade. Unfortunately the file sizes are massive compared with JPEG, a 8megapixel shot in JPEG may be 2 or 3 MB depending on the compression, however the same image in TIFF could 25MB or larger a bit of difference don’t you think.

RAW: RAW doesn’t really stand for anything, it’s unique to each camera manufacturer and only the top end cameras will be able to operate this format, when you take a picture in JPEG the camera will apply some processing to the image i.e. white balance. However in RAW no processing takes place, when the image is down loaded it must be processed and then converted the manufacturer will provide the necessary software for this, or there are software packages on the market that will do this.

As I said at the beginning the majority of people do need to worry about these formats just keeping shooting in JPEG as you have always done. I actually shot in RAW format; in my next article I will explain

Cardiff and Portsmouth will contest the final of the FA Cup this afternoon. It a bit of a shock that these teams made it to the final (nothing against either Cardiff or Portsmouth), I would have thought that pubs and clubs would rather have one of the top teams in the final as they will bring in more punters.

I doubt very much that the local pubs around here will be full, however if one of the big four would have made then it would be different story. But that’s not the case so good luck to both teams; I’ll still be watching it’s about the only game I still watch any more.

Saturday, normally I would be getting ready to venture into town and have look around, this Saturday I don’t need a thing and after my asthma episode early in the week, I am making sure that I fully recovered before work on Monday.

Beside next week is Bank Holiday weekend and we are off to Yorkshire to visit my dad, hopefully it will be a nice weekend, I have my fingers crossed already.

As promised I will try and write a few articles on photography, but they might have to wait until tomorrow to be posted.

Rabbit