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New Camera - 500D

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JohnMurphy
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« on: May 31, 2009, 01:28:14 am »

I finally persuaded 'er indoors to let me get a new camera. I sold my Celestron 102SLT scope and traded in my Canon 350D, added quite a few hundred Euro and got the new Canon 500D. First impressions - very nice. Drawbacks? a few - I can no longer open RAW files in CS3. Don't know yet how this is going to affect my astrophotography, maybe DSS can't open the new RAW format either? Also my Astronomik CLS filter isn't fitting too well - a bit loose. I'll let you all know how I get on tomorrow night. I'll give my old favourite M27 a bash. The move from an 8MP to a 15.1MP camera is massive lets hope I can do it justice.
In  the meantime here are some "First Light" shots from the local duck pond. Terrestrially speaking this is super. The file sizes are huge - up to 20MB in RAW.





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brianb
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« Reply #1 on: May 31, 2009, 09:25:20 am »

Congratulations on the new camera!

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Drawbacks? a few - I can no longer open RAW files in CS3.
Try updating Adobe Camera Raw.
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JohnMurphy
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« Reply #2 on: May 31, 2009, 12:56:35 pm »

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Try updating Adobe Camera Raw

If only it was that simple....
ACR 5 is only supported in CS4. I unfortunately have CS3, and I'm damned if I'm forking out more to Adobe.
I'll use the Canon photo professional for processing my RAW files for the moment, save them in 16 bit TIFF and then use Photoshop.
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« Reply #3 on: May 31, 2009, 01:59:18 pm »

John, love those awesome Heron images  Smiley
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rjgjr
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« Reply #4 on: May 31, 2009, 04:37:20 pm »

Absolutely stunning images John, looks like the camera is a winner!
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jgs001
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« Reply #5 on: June 01, 2009, 10:16:38 am »

Superb shots John. Looks like a beaut. Hope you got lots of storage  Grin. There's a couple of options. Use Adobe DNG converter, I think the DNG files are actually smaller than the resulting files from DPP. Or, take a look at something like Lightroom. It's much cheaper than CS4 (especially if you have someone in education in the household) and does the same thing as ACR. I ended up using LR (and now aperture) as most of my processing was done in ACR anyway and it's much easier to do in either LR or Aperture than PS.
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John
Canon 450d, EF-S 18-55 IS, 55-250 IS, Raynox DCR250
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« Reply #6 on: June 02, 2009, 05:10:27 pm »

The shots speak volumes for the camera - looks like a good move , the previous photos of herons were excellent too. I'll check this 500D out. I've fiinshed with my 350D too but it's gone in the glove compartment of the car  with the 18-55 kit lens so if I come across anything I want to photo it's there without having the 40D etc. on board.
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JohnMurphy
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« Reply #7 on: June 05, 2009, 01:25:49 pm »

Superb shots John. Looks like a beaut. Hope you got lots of storage  Grin. There's a couple of options. Use Adobe DNG converter, I think the DNG files are actually smaller than the resulting files from DPP. Or, take a look at something like Lightroom. It's much cheaper than CS4 (especially if you have someone in education in the household) and does the same thing as ACR. I ended up using LR (and now aperture) as most of my processing was done in ACR anyway and it's much easier to do in either LR or Aperture than PS.

Thanks for the advice. I'll have a look at LightRoom. All my processing can be done on the RAWS, and I don't really need photoshop for anything other than that. Just a wee tweak on the exposure, a bit of sharpening and saturation, a quick crop and save to JPEG.
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jgs001
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« Reply #8 on: June 08, 2009, 10:25:43 am »

The other benefit, you can have multiple sets of the same image with different settings applied and you don't eat up hard disk space like it's going out of fashion, as the adjustments are stored in the LR DB and only actually applied to the image when you export it to jpg or tif. I was messing with an image last night to try an HDR on it, and created three sets of the same image (without actually using any disk space) adjusting the exposure for the extra pair...
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John
Canon 450d, EF-S 18-55 IS, 55-250 IS, Raynox DCR250
HQE5 + C80ED & Vista 80s. NexStar Skymax 102 SLT.

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JohnMurphy
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« Reply #9 on: June 14, 2009, 10:52:18 pm »

Just an update.
I got around my RAW files in photoshop CS3 issue. Adobe released a new DNG converter with support for the 500D, and by converting my RAWs to version 4.6 DNG images I can now open my RAWs in CS3. It really does make a huge difference being able to contine using this.
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JohnC
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« Reply #10 on: June 16, 2009, 10:49:49 pm »

I missed these, John.  I was En-route to the US  back on the 18th.  Is that our friend ? Mr/Mrs.Heron or an impostor Lol.

The camera is certainly doing you proud.

 I have Lightroom2 and CS2 which is adequate for what I want. I 've been converted to the RAW cause - I read a lot about it versus Jpeg and came to the conclusion that RAW is best so that's what my camera is set on. Never had any probs. editing with CS2 ,I see you have CS3
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