Atherton & District Amateur Photographic Society

You need to use the Pentax Photo Laboratory software that came with the camera.

This will enable you to view the PEF files and convert them to TIFF so they can be handled by Photoshop.

If you need specific help then we can do this on the laptop and show you how it works.

To be honest, until you are familiar with the camera I'd stick to using JPEG only and save yourself a lot of card space.

Not controversial at all Paul, but there is a learning curve involved.

The newer cameras may not be surported in CS2 or earlier. Adobe update the RAW converter at regular intervals as new cameras are released, but I think the latest version only works with CS3, the latest version of Elements or Lightroom.

I agree with Paul that once you shoot RAW you will not go back.
However if you are going to do it use a proper piece of software such as CaptureOne who simply add the new camera profiles. Adobe does not support the earlier versions with the new camera profiles so why upgrade beyond version 7?

Now who is talking controvercy?

Theo

Whilst all this is good advice the original question was from the point of view of a photographer just moving into digital SLR photography.

In that context, I'm pretty sure he doesn't need RAW capture.

I'm yet to be convinced that it is really necessary in most cases anyway. JPEG capture yields superb A3 prints and the test prints we ran off last year comparing RAW and JPEG were hardly convincing.

If you recall, some subjects suited RAW in terms of detail, some suited JPEG in terms of smoothness of tone and at normal viewing distances they all looked as good as each other.

Of course, as individuals we do whatever suits us, and that's part of the wonderful thing about photography. There's more than one way to skin a cat. I suppose that is quite a distressing thought to cats everywhere...

Of course with the Pentax K10D, you can set it to jpeg, and press the "raw" button when you take a one off shot that you may want to experiment with raw, for example using different white balance settings. Best of both worlds without wasting memory

There's more than one way to skin a cat.

Some years back I was having a conversation with a taxidermist, who indeed verified that there was more than one way to skin a cat ...
but only one right way ...

there was more than one way to skin a cat ...
but only one right way ...

From the cat's point of view there is no right way.



A letter quoted in PHOTO TECHNIQUE some years ago said "Have you ever seen what damage a sparrow can do to a jet engine?"

The reply was "If we are being environmentally conscious perhaps we should be asking have you ever seen what a jet engine can do to a sparrow..."

That magazine was so ahead if its time.