2 posts tagged “canon”

I recently bought the new Canon 450D - great camera, by the way - to augment our digital camera arsenal for an upcoming wedding shoot. The general approach we take with photography is to stick with Raw mode wherever possible as it gives us a bit more flexibility in the adjustment stage, particularly around the white balance, without as much damage to the image compared to using Jpeg.

The Raw image format is specific to each particular model of camera due to the nature of the image CCD layout, camera settings, etc. Photoshop eases the support for Raw by using a plug-in. Adobe keep updating the Photoshop Camera Raw plug-in with the details of the latest and greatest cameras:

http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/cameraraw.html

They added support for the EOS 450D to Camera Raw 4, specifically version 4.4.

So where is the built-in obsolescence?

Camera Raw 4 is only supported by Photoshop CS3 or Photoshop Lightroom. It is not compartible with Photoshop CS2, which is the version I have, and Adobe do not add camera support to older versions of the Camera Raw plug-in.

So I now have a choice:

• Use Jpeg instead of RAW format when taking photos.
• Use Canon's Digital Photo Professional tool, supplied with the camera, to convert the RAW images into Jpeg.
• Spend £700 upgrading my CS2 suite to CS3.

Hmmm ... some choice!

The Microsoft Photography Blog has reported that Canon has released their RAW codec for Windows Vista.

To download it:

• Visit http://www.usa.canon.com/consumer/controller?act=DownloadIndexAct
• Category = “EOS (SLR) Camera Systems”, Product Type = “Digital EOS Cameras” and then choose your camera model from the third dropdown
• Click Go
• Click the “Drivers / Software” link at the top of the page
• Choose the Canon RAW Codec  1.0
• Download and run the executable

The codec will support .CR2 RAW files, but not .CRW files.  It includes support for the following cameras:

• EOS-1Ds Mark II
• EOS-1D Mark III
• EOS-1D Mark II N
• EOS-1D Mark II
• EOS 5D
• EOS 30D
• EOS 20D
• EOS 400D DIGITAL
• EOS DIGITAL REBEL XTi
• EOS Kiss Digital X
• EOS 350D DIGITAL
• EOS DIGITAL REBEL XT
• EOS Kiss Digital N