touristguy87's photostream  

Personally I find digital photography to be a little confusing. They are always "my shots", but never my interpretation. And I mean let's face it, we all can see the same thing but we will never see it the same way.

Digital photography, if it does anything, it forces the world to face the choice of allowing people to do things which some would find unsettling and indeed threatening. But you have to face it. Billions of people get great enjoyment from digital photography each and every day without influencing your life in the slightest. Can you actually imagine that happening, or does it all come down to you and your fears? Can you really be harmed by a photograph? Or is the real problem the truth, and the harm that the truth can bring to you?

Well, let's face it, in the end we all need to have our own version of the truth. Free from anyone elses' opinion of it. We all need to be able to see things and believe in what we see without worrying about what someone else thinks. Don't we. We need to have freedom somewhere, somehow. If not in real-life, then at least in our own minds. And let's face the facts people we are having a hard time getting even that. Enjoy the fact that at least for today you are free to think whatever you think about whatever you see. Sooner or later we will lose that freedom too. My photos are not merely mementos of space, they are also mementos of time. A time when we were free to see something and take a picture of it and enjoy that view and that image in our minds, free of persecution and interference from others. I guarantee you that in short order that freedom will disappear. Enjoy it while it lasts.

....

Second I would like to do my part to spread the religion of raw shooting. The following is a simple and easy tutorial for raw shooting with dcraw. A free and easy to use software package that will help you to get the best out of your hardware.

First, set your camera up to take raw shots. If you need to, check the Wiki CHDK for tips on raw shooting with point & shoots.

Second, you need a copy of dcraw for your OS or an OS for your copy of dcraw.

You can find a DOS version of dcraw here:
www.insflug.org/raw/Downloads/
try both the ms and non-ms versions

And the basic dcraw.c for Linux here:
www.cybercom.net/~dcoffin/dcraw/
build using
gcc -o dcraw dcraw.c -lm -ljpeg -llcms

or use the -DNO_JPEG and -DNO_LCMS
if you neither intend to extract the camera jpegs from the raw files, nor intend to attach ICC profiles to your images. If you do not know what either of these mean, then don't worry about them.

The rest is easy.

Dump your raw files into a directory and run dcraw on them thusly:

dcraw -w -W -T -H0 *.*
(or *.CR2 or *.NEF or whatever)

And you will eventually get a bunch of 8-bit sRGB tiff files with gamma...basically what your camera produces in terms of jpegs, but without all the awful noise-reduction.

Feel free to process from there in your favorite image-editor...if you really want to add exif info etc, let me know and I'll set up a page to explain that process.

Good luck :)