• Give you the ability of working with uncompressed files; contains all information from your sensor.
• More control in adjusting white balance, shadow/highlights, contrast, brightness, noise etc. due to the 12 bit information within the RAW file
• Useful in extreme conditions. Low/High contrast or low light scenes.
• Better image quality if you are competent in your photoshop skills

Now, you read all these and say, “Great, from now on, I will always shoot in RAW format.” Well, you could do that if you fulfill (at least for me) these 3 conditions.

1. Disk space – Not a major problems nowadays. The gigabytes per dollar ratio is dropping rapidly; affordable terabytes are coming in the next 2 years. But how much is too much? A typical RAW file is about 8 meg. Add to that, your converted tiff, psd and jpeg file, you will fill up your hard disk in super quick time. I find that I need to buy a new external hard disk every 6 months.
2. Time – Post processing takes time. If you have an inefficient workflow, you will take even more time. The thing about RAW is that you can’t batch process them as that would eliminate the advantages of the RAW process.
3. Post processing skills (PP) – To me this is the most important factor. Without good PP skills and experience to see a good photograph, no matter how you shift the scroll bar in your adjustment, you will not get a better photograph than your DSLR can automatically give you.

Now that I have lay out the case for you. Do you want to answer the question yourself?

Do you need to shoot in RAW format?

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They have even pulled out of the show in the NEC.

More here …

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Samsung announce their first digital SLR – The GX-1S

6 mega-pixels CCD

Light weight and portable – only 505g

Large bright 2.5 inch colour TFT LCD screen

Pentaprism technology provides clear, bright viewfinder

11 point auto focus

High sensitivity up to ISO 3200

Samsung is announcing its advance into the digital SLR (Digital Single Lens Reflex) camera arena with the launch of the six mega-pixel GX-1S.

In February, the new interchangeable lens GX-1S is Samsung’s first digital SLR camera, developed in conjunction with Pentax. Samsung now provides a full offering of digital cameras to cater for the needs of everyone – from point and shooters to advanced enthusiast photographers.

Offering high portability and mobility through its compact design, the GX-1S will weigh just 505 grams and house a 23.5mm x 15.7mm CCD image sensor. The 3200 ISO equivalent allows high sensitivity shooting in indoor environments.

The GX-1S also provides a continuous shooting speed of 2.8 frames per second (up to eight frames in JPEG mode).

Lens
The GX-1S will utilize the new advanced Schneider Kreuznach D-Xenon lens system and Pentax’s lens KAF bayonet mount technology – all Pentax DSLR lens will be mountable on the GX-1S.

Viewfinder
The large TFT colour LCD screen (2.5 inch and 210K pixels) and Pentaprism technology ensure a clear and bright view. The field of view is 95% with magnification at 0.95x (50mm F1.4 lens).

Focusing, Shutter & Flash
Modes include AF Single (with focus lock) and manual focus together with continuous AF . Shutter speed is 30 ~ 1/4,000 sec. with Bulb. The flash is a built-in retractable P-TTL auto pop-up offering the following modes: Auto, Manual, Auto/Red-eye reduction, Manual/red-eye reduction. Angle of view coverage is 28mm wide-angle (equivalent to 35mm). Recharge time is 3 seconds.

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