Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Shooting RAW and JPEG at the same time with the Pentax K-5 and other Pentax DSLRs.

They can sleep through all the noise...but lay them in bed at the house and they won't want to sleep!


  Email: brqyvn@gmail.com

Hi Pentaxian friends.

I've been gone on a mini-vacation since last Sunday. I had my iPad with me but it's a little cumbersome to load, edit and publish images, while on the road, with the iPad. I did take some video clips with the iPad and using the iMovie application, I made a two minutes movie/slide presentation about the abundance of food we have in the U.S. and how it is in Somalia. and third world Countries. More on that later on this coming week.

I used my Pentax K-5 during my trip and I wanted to have RAW files, (to further enhance in Post Processing later on if needed) and JPEG to post on the Internet immediately after shooting. Many photographers shy away of saving images in both formats because it takes too much room on your SD memory card(s). While it is true, what if you happen to get a "once-in-a-lifetime" picture in JPEG only and you have to tweak it in Photoshop?  You know it's difficult to get great results in Post Processing once a file has been converted to JPEG.

You all know that with most of Pentax DSLRs, you can shoot RAW + JPEG at the same time. However, here is something that some of you may not know. When choosing RAW + JPEG, the JPEG file does not have to be at the full resolution. In the case of the K-5, the JPEG files can be set to 16mp, 10mp, 6mp and 2mp. So what I did, is to set the RAW format to DNG (because all Adobe products recognizes it easily) and I had the JPEG set to 6mp, conserving space on the memory card and allowing the file to be large enough to render very acceptable images and to be quickly sent on the Internet, whether posting or emailing.

It's a simple tip, but you never know when one of your image will be worthy of a  publishing contract with National Geographic. Having the full resolution RAW file and a small JPEG  is a great insurance...for me anyway.

Thanks for reading,

Yvon Bourque

7 comments:

Allister said...

Thanks for that tip. I had no idea the K-5 had that feature.

For RAW processing on the iPad the best I've tried is Snapseed. It is quick, even on my 1st generation iPad and the user interface is great.

Unknown said...

Good Morning;
I use Photogene on the iPad to do a quick crop and other adjustments of a jpeg and upload to Facebook or any number of other services. It allows you to resize the upload as well.

Ticats said...

Great tip. I also was unaware that the K5 had that feature.

Yvon Bourque said...

I have Snapseed, but what I didn't have was the optional connector to insert the SDHC card and transfer the images to the iPad. That's the Apple way...nothing is expandable. I have the iPad 32gb but I cannot upgrade memory...I would need to purchase the iPad 64 to get to 64gb memory.

Lucas Kain said...

Nice tip! A friend of mine will probably be delighted to know this. If he already doesn't, though! I really appreciate your information and work about the situation in 3rd world countries. Cheers!

___
Simply Fone

Unknown said...

Thanks for the tip!:)
Good to know, I want to be K-5.:)

Nathan Chilton said...

I do this, too, from time to time, except that I go even further, and set the JPGs to be 2-star (quality) at 2MP resolution. That's still plenty big for uploading to the web.

In addition, I have an Eye-Fi Pro card in the camera, which is configured such that any JPGs that I set as "protected" in the camera get transferred to my phone, so that I can upload them to the web while still in the field away from my computer.

With the ability to do some post-processing in the camera (and the option to add additional effects on my Android phone), I don't have to wait until I have a chance to sit in front of the computer to share an interesting photograph with others.

One thing the K-5 has, that my older cameras do not have, is the ability to save your last photo as a RAW file, even when you've been shooting in JPG-only mode. So if you just shot an amazing image and kick yourself for not switching to RAW first, you still have a chance to save that RAW file (because the K-5 holds it in memory for you, until you shoot another image).