Shooting RAW, Editing w Mac, Questions!

Good morning to all (at least in China where I live)

A couple of questions about shhoting in raw, post shoot editing, etc.

First peice of info: I shoot a D70 in a Subal housing. Usually shoot in JPEG fine mode.

Second peice of info: I use an iMac for storing, managing, and editing photos (I'll spare you my Mac evangelism for now!). Specifically I use the lastest version of iPhoto which enables pretty robust editing capabilities including adjustments for (among other things) color saturation, exposure, and color temperature.

I know most "serious" photographers shoot in RAW mode and edit in photoshop, but have any of you tried iPhoto? For the kind of shooting I do, I am really happy with it, but then again, I am not sure I know what I am missing.

I tend to be somewhat of a purist - meaning a few minor adjustments to a digital image are fully "ethical", but fundamentally changing the composition or quality of the image seems to go against the spirit of wildlife photography. I mean if you blow the shot, you blow the shot. Great photographers should (and do) get great images straight from the card.

So what do guys think about iPhoto's capabilities? How much am I missing out on by not using photoshop?

Thanks!

Brad

I forgot to add that iPhoto allows you to do all of these image adjustments in JPEG mode. Thus RAW just seems to take up more memory on my cards and hard drive (at least this is the hypothesis I'd like your comment on)

Cheers!

brad

Hi Brad,

I don't use iPhoto, so can't comment on that.

The benefits of shooting RAW are that you can make all the important adjustments - White Balance, and Exposure - to the RAW file, which is then converted to a 16 bit output. You can also correct for chromatic aberration and other lens defects like vignetting. Nothing else even comes close.

I like Photoshop and Capture One.

Cheers

James

Brad,

The newest iPhoto adjustment palette is great for Mac users (me) as I shoot Fine / Large JPEG, too. I even recently un-installed Adobe Elements 2.0 and will likely get Adobe Elements 3.0 for my needs soon. I've used iPhoto 5.0.2 exclusively to edit and adjust images sent to various venues (magazines, etc.) It's fast, easy to use and for Mac users about all that's needed. Plus you can save a copy as a JPEG, TIFF, etc.

There should be a RAW adaptation for the Canon Rebel XT coming to iPhoto soon, and I may try shooting RAW then. I believe the RAW mode of Nikon's D70 is supported by iPhoto now. I'd try it and see if you feel you need the added adjustments that many at Wetpixel seems to like.

Personally after shooting transparencies (slide film) for many years and getting close to a good exposure I haven't found Fine / Large JPEG to be much of a detriment. This subject has been discussed in many forums here and you might want to do a search on RAW if you're interested in various people's opinions.

Good luck!

David Haas