got eos 350D, Q about packaged wares

[Cybix]

I'm wondering if I should bother installing the packaged software that came with my 350D, onto my macbook pro. I doubt it's universal binary? or perhaps there is updates?

so at the moment, my ability to play with my pictures is limited (iPhoto?)..

i bought the camera today, havent had a decent camera for a very long time.. so I'm a bit excited...

I'm going to Hong Kong for a holiday in a couple of days and taking this baby with me (and my MBP)...

ultimately All I want to do for my trip is unload the camera ea night to my MBP, resize the pics to something viewable for web (and upload the pics to my coppermine photogallery which i host at home)..

as a short term solution i spose i can just shoot my pics in JPG (not raw), and 'automater' my pics to my desired res.. upload, etc..

after my trip I'll want to look at better software..

aperture?

now while the replies to my thread come pouring in with excellent advice, I'll now go and read the rest of the posts in the 'digital photography' forum

James
(dSLR n00b)

 

[rockandrule]

Well, you can always download the public beta of Lightroom. It seems to be pretty good software from my experience with it. Although it is not UB, it should suit your needs for something capable of RAW imaging. IMHO, find that Aperture is much more friendly and easy to use, but unfortunately Apple does not even offer a trial of the software for you to use until you can purchase the real deal. Great prices though once you can get a copy for yourself! I think that the $300 and $250 for students price sets are great. Well, have fun with your new toy, and make sure to post pictures of your trip!

 

[ChrisBrightwell]

If you're not going to bother shooting in RAW, Aperture and Lightroom are almost a waste of time.

 

[Cybix]

If you're not going to bother shooting in RAW, Aperture and Lightroom are almost a waste of time.

definately want to shoot in raw, but probably not for this first trip as I plan to just dump jpeg's to my webserver with what software i have. (until i can get something like aperture)... hrmmm

My wife is a uni student, perhaps student pricing will work out, I'll check it out

 

[ChrisBrightwell]

definately want to shoot in raw, but probably not for this first trip as I plan to just dump jpeg's to my webserver with what software i have. (until i can get something like aperture)... hrmmm

iPhoto can handle RAW and export to JPG.

 

[crazyeyes]

definately want to shoot in raw, but probably not for this first trip as I plan to just dump jpeg's to my webserver with what software i have. (until i can get something like aperture)... hrmmm

My wife is a uni student, perhaps student pricing will work out, I'll check it out

Yeah the student pricing is excellent. It is half price for students. $150 i just checked it out at apples website. I just got a Nikon D50 and i am thinking of buying a copy.

 

[ChrisA]

Aperture will not allow to to do much with your photos other then basic crops and general color ballance and adjust contrast and so on. Just basic general controls. If you want to acrualy edit the images (that means to make changes to selected parts of the image, say to make a background less distracting) you wil need an image editor. Theindustry standrad is Photoshop. But it is expensive and not yet a universal binary. PS Elements is inexpensive (and still not UB) Gimp is free, runs native on Intel Macs and is photoshop-like. Untill Adobe's CS3 comes out gimp will run circles around CS2 do to CS2' use of Rosetta.

But if you are simply publishing mostly un-altered images to the web (and not making "fine art quality" prints then iPhoto may be best. It's is fast (unlike Aperture) and very easy to use.

As for shooting in raw format. It is really only usful if either 1) lighting is such that you are not sure you can get the correct exposure or 2) you know you will be doing extensive "photoshopping" and very much altering the images.

 

[Cybix]

thanks for the great advice!

I'll shoot in the highest jpeg mode for this trip, and dabble in iPhoto. perhaps even use the publish to iWeb feature to do a 'blog' for the trip....

What about taking a tripod with me? I have a fairly light weight alumn tripod which I've had for a while... take it?

I mean who hasn't seen long exp night pics taken in HK? hahaha

 

[law guy]

Canon Digital Photo Professional ("DPP" for short) is included on the disc of free software that ships with every EOS body. With it, you can take a RAW image and put yourself back with the Canon camera controls after the fact. For example, you can apply any of the standard Canon picture styles (which are in the firmware of the 30D, 5D, and 1Dn Mk II) to a RAW image and download other pictures styles from Canon as well. You can find an explaination of PICTURE STYLES and EXAMPLES of the DIFFERENT ONES at this link: http://photoworkshop.com/canon/picturestyle/shooting/ Of course, you also redo the white balance and adjust exposure by two stops. You can also adjust JPEG images, but the range of adjustments is more limited as you'd expect.

There are a whole new set of streaming on-line tutorials from Canon on the http://www.photoworkshop.com site.

Here's the link to the overview and the streaming tutorials: http://photoworkshop.com/canon/dpp2/index.html

It probably takes around a half an hour to develop a fairly good knowledge of how to use DPP with your Canon. The program is actually very easy to understand and I'd recommend watching the tutorials first and then playing in DPP.

Also check out the workflow video - third tab in the link above.

RE Apperture - I haven't tried it yet. I need to upgrade my dual 1.42's graphic card first if I want to use it. But I have found the new Vincent Laforet profile very interting / impressive. You'll recognize this set of images from the Canon EOS 30D photo brochure released around the same time as that camera to promote its abilities. Mr. Laforet claims that he uses Apperture as his total workflow solution. http://www.apple.com/aperture/profiles/

I've played around with Lightroom Beta 2 and 3 - which are currently free, but they will expire and the program will cost money at some point in the near future. Kudos for Adobe getting the kids hooked with a free sample. I like the features of the loop and the light table like arranging tool in Apperture, which aren't in the Lightroom program. Again, I haven't tried Apperture yet, so perhaps the positive view I have of it based on the overviews, feature descriptions, etc. on the Apple site will fade if I actually try it - which I'm leaning more towards doing soon. (again, first the graphics card upgrade is needed - at that point, upgrading to a 256 MB ATI 9800 Pro 4x AGP, will be getting close to maxing out the upgrades I can do to my dual 1.42 which already has the requisite 2 GB of RAM).

 

[Cybix]

i dont think the canon software is universal binary?

I guess I'm just fussy and 'try' to keep non-intel binaries off my macbook pro..

might install and check it out anyway!

 

[cookie1105]

DPP is a perfectly good program. But the real bonus with the canon software is photostitch.

Quite honestly, I see nothing wrong with using iphoto and the gimp. However I use Lightroom 3 and PS CS. I just dread to think how much Lightroom is going to cost when it comes out. Oh well maybe I will be rich by then