Mike G wrote:

Shooting in raw doesn't have much to do with low light shooting, as it does with post process adjustability.

Well, for me, that's the main form of adjustability I'd be doing-- I think. What else do you, or would you, do to food photos?

For me, the most important features to getting good natural light food photos are (in this order):

1. The glass (get the fastest lens with the best glass you can afford)
2. The ability to process your photos in RAW (as you suspected)

Well...ideally, you'd want the right equipment so that you'll have to do as little post processing as you can to get to your desired end result.

Well, sure. But reality is, I'm in a restaurant, the light is what it is, and I can only aim straight and hope for the best. But I know that under identical conditions, some people here can get shots I can't right now with my existing Canon. I'm not hoping for the impossible... just what I've already seen they can achieve under the same conditions. A 20% improvement will be a big deal.

2. The ability to process your photos in RAW (as you suspected)

So Stevez, what do you typically find yourself doing with photos under the kind of conditions I'm talking about above?

I shoot with my new Canon SD4000IS

F2.0 VERY clean files even at 3200 ISO (featuring a backlit CMOS sensor)
AV and TV mode (with (+, - compensation)

Does not have RAW but FWIW I'm going to say that's fine for 99% of the shots I do.
I can make plenty of adjustments to my images in both Lightroom 3.0 and Photoshop 4 and above.
nail your exposure BEFORE you shoot!

Here are my key factors when shooting JPEGS

Matching your color balance to your source (or improving upon your light with an in camera adjustment)
Shooting at as fast of an exposure as you can given the lighting conditions and the amount of focus needed
Choosing an ISO that helps you achieve the above requirements.

I'm blown away at the quality of the high ISO shot that this camera produces
I've done a few test (really boring shots in low light) and they look great.

Mike G wrote:
So Stevez, what do you typically find yourself doing with photos under the kind of conditions I'm talking about above?

Of course, every situation is different, but typically, I adjust both black and white levels as well as exposure when necessary. I also frequently add some "fill light" where some of the detail falls off into the shadows.

I like having the ability to shoot in RAW because it does allow for maximum adjustability after the shot. But I think that it isn't a deal-breaker if you have full versions of good software (e.g. Photoshop, Noise Ninja, etc.). With those tools, shots are still fairly adjustable, even without RAW mode shooting (because you can still white-balance shots in any number of other file formats). The faster the lens, the better off you are in low light situations but the trade-off is grain (noise), which is where good software can help clean up your images quite a bit. A program like Noise Ninja (and there are several others on the market) really helps to clean up images that are shot at high ISO levels.

What I think is a very underrated feature is image stabilization, which allows for relatively jitter-free, hand-held shooting in low light conditions. If a compact set-up is priority, this feature is a must. Otherwise, you'll need a mount or mini tripod (or an extremely steady hand), which is going to bog you down. When you're shooting in low light (and the aperature has to stay open longer to get the image), some sort of stabilization will greatly help you get clear shots.

I have a Canon PowerShot S90, which is compact, does shoot in RAW mode and offers very effective image stabilization. It's fast but unfortunately, not fast enough to really handle very low light situations in a satisfactory way. In more difficult low light in spots -- where my larger DSLR does exceedingly well -- the s90 simply cannot compare. Even after extensive post-production, the shots are grainy and colors are distorted. The other 75% of the time, in medium light to daylight, this is an excellent camera that will probably meet all your requirements. But I've had mine almost a year and I'm guessing that there are plenty of newer, superior options currently available.

=R=

There actually isn't a whole lot of new compact point and shoot cameras that compete against the s90 right now...certainly not one that share the same sensor size and fast glass in a small package. There's the new micro 4/3 setups and uber expensive Leica's, but those are still typically larger than a compact point and shoot unless a fixed pancake lens is mounted.

I'd say the best in class is still a tossup between the Canon s90 and Samsung TL500, followed by the Panasonic LX-3. Rumor has it Panasonic may announce an LX-4 by end of July, but that is all speculatory. Even if one is released by the end of the year, I'd suspect it would be difficult to get your hands on one given that the LX-3 was out of stock at most places more than a year after it was released.

Ron makes a good point regarding image stabilization. It does help a bit if you're shooting with a slower shutter speed. The Samsung TL500 features dual image stabilization in the lens as well as in the camera body.

While I am by no means a buff, (or buff, but that's neither here nor there) I would recommend a look at the Fuji Finepix f200 EXR.

It's a compact, but it has carved out low-light as its niche. It has a 1.6" sensor and 12MP (as opposed to the much higher MP cameras that just end up producing more noise), as well as image stabilization which, all together, provide quite good results in low light. (And the zoom is 5x, FWIW.)

It doesn't have raw mode, but it's very pocketable, sturdily built, and I've been very happy with it in a variety of circumstances. It's definitely not quite as "serious" a piece of equipment as the s90, but it's also substantially more affordable and I've found it a pleasure to use.

Came out just about a year ago, so it's not the shiniest newest model on the block, but far from obsolete, and, again, I don't think anyone else is making low-light results a priority in a compact at this price point.

I would check out dpreview.com's review for a detailed assessment.

The big camera trade show, Photokina, which is held every other year, is this September. Expect a flurry of new cameras to be announced shortly before the show.

Well, I went back and forth, I read reviews, I looked at advice...

and meanwhile my Canon stopped focusing on anything closer than a few feet...

and then at one site I found a way to get $50 off the Panasonic DMC-ZS7, the fully automatic version with a Leica lens, as opposed to the LX3, which is more adjustable (but, some sites warned, not as good at fully automatic shots). And suddenly the difference between the two wasn't about $80, but $130, half again as much for the LX3. So I decided, without much more thought, that I had a use for a fully automatic, really nice $250 camera, regardless of whether I decide to get something more fancy and allowing me to do things more manually at some future date. It's probably not the leap to vastly better photos I was looking for, but I pretty much came to doubt that there was any one pocket camera that did all that anyway. And at least I would be following Stevez's advice about getting the best glass you can, by all reports, this has the best glass in any $300-range camera.

So watch for new photos... and how I feel about this choice, I guess.

Hi,

I replace stuff once they die. My camera earlier this week did a good imitation of death while recharging. The circuit I used is the same my dishwasher runs on. I suspected its unexpected departure may have been related to voltage fluctuation.

I happen to have a twin of my camera with a cracked screen. I contemplated attempting to swap the screens myself. I have a clean bench available to do the surgery without introducing any dust hopefully.

This morning I was looking to see if anyone had documented how to open and replace the screen. While on the hunt, I saw a passing comment on a reset button with no indication where it was located. I did a little more searching, I found the reset button was on the edge of the battery compartment covered by the door. Removed the battery and memory card, then use the tip of a paperclip to insert and hold down this reset button for six seconds. I just did it and my camera is back to life.

My camera happens to be a Hewlett Packard R707. If your camera dies unexpectedly, do a search for a reset switch for your camera model. It's your camera's circuit breaker trying to prevent further damage, though this info may not be on the manufacturer's website.

Of course if you were looking for an excuse to replace your camera, never mind.

Regards,

Mike G wrote: (and why people like Ronnie and Stevez can pull it off in conditions where I get an amber cast at best, even with some p'shop wizardry on the back end).

I missed this the first time around.

As others have mentioned, post-processing flexibility is one of the most important advantages of raw. You can also usually eke out a good bit more dynamic range (the range of tonal values between pure black and pure white) shooting in a raw, coaxing detail out of highlights that would normally be clipped in a JPEG capture, but I won't go into that.

Your post about the amber cast is what I want to address. With a JPEG capture, if you don't have your white balance set correctly, there's only so much color correction you can do before your file starts to break down. As you've noted, you have some captures with an amber cast, and even with Photoshopping on the back end, you haven't been able to quite correct them. If your camera is set to daylight WB, and you're taking pictures indoors under an incandescent light, you're going to get a strong amber cast. You can correct a bit of this in post by shifting the white balance towards blue, but if the cast is strong enough, there's just not enough color data in your file to preserve the colors in the scene, and you'll get all sorts of weird blue and magenta casts. You're basically screwed if you want to preserve your original color fidelity.

Now, when you shoot raw, it doesn't matter whether your white balance is set to 2000K (deep incandescent) or 10000K (high altitude/cloudy/very blue light) or whether you've correctly adjusted for green/magenta values (fluorescent light). The raw capture records exactly the same sensor data no matter how your camera's WB is set. What does change is the little bit of metadata that's tagged onto your file, which tells your raw file convertor how to process your file. It takes the WB data and then shifts the color data accordingly. This means that even if your white balance is completely off, you can basically go back and adjust after-the-fact, and get exactly the same results you would have had you set the white balance correctly the first time around.

Binko wrote:This means that even if your white balance is completely off, you can basically go back and adjust after-the-fact, and get exactly the same results you would have had you set the white balance correctly the first time around.

This is the reason I shoot raw, too.. cameras are getting better at detecting the proper white balance, but still nowhere near perfect.

That said, I do believe some cameras use the white balance setting to inform their automatic exposure system.. if you're shooting in manual, not a concern.. but if you're in aperture priority mode or program mode, you may want to get your white balance reasonably close in-camera before taking that shot. But it's not too critical.

gleam wrote:

Binko wrote:This means that even if your white balance is completely off, you can basically go back and adjust after-the-fact, and get exactly the same results you would have had you set the white balance correctly the first time around.

This is the reason I shoot raw, too.. cameras are getting better at detecting the proper white balance, but still nowhere near perfect.

That said, I do believe some cameras use the white balance setting to inform their automatic exposure system.. if you're shooting in manual, not a concern.. but if you're in aperture priority mode or program mode, you may want to get your white balance reasonably close in-camera before taking that shot. But it's not too critical.

Yeah, you have enough leeway with raw that being off by a third of a stop or two thirds of a stop shouldn't be a concern. However, so far as I've ever been able to dig up, while color may be used in something like Nikon's proprietary Color Matrix Metering to figure out exposure, the actual white balance setting is not taken into account. From what I've seen on my cameras (Nikon D3, D200, D70, Canon 5D), I can't even get the exposure reading to move a third of a stop no matter what white balance setting I'm using. But there's a lot of different cameras and different exposure metering systems, so it's completely possible that somebody uses WB to determine exposure (although I personally can't see why color data should affect a luminance reading.)

There is one exception I didn't mention, because I doubt anyone is using it anymore, but for completeness' sake: in the original Nikon D1, white balance setting did affect the data saved in the raw format. So far as I know, that's the only camera in which this was the case.

Anyhow, I tend to shoot mostly manual, but when I shoot for raw I also shoot for slight overexposure (as if I were shooting negative film) vs when I shoot JPEG (where I shoot like slide, and perhaps underexpose by 1/3 of a stop in order to preserve highlights.) The reason for this is basically a consequence of how the raw file format works.