[vincentgargano]

i think the whole reason for the raw+jpg button is this ....if you are out shooting and you are shooting in jpg and there are some shots you want in raw by hitting the button you will get both ( bare with me here) its giving you both together for the reason of having that days shoot complete with all jpgs of all captures this is handy for someone who might be sharing the photos with a client or business partner or friend that may not have the ability to view a raw file for whatever reason. mean while you still have some raw versions for your own use ...if you had just a raw button to switch from one to the other you would have a mix match of formats for the shoot.
and if a person is really into shooting raw they would set the camera from the menu before the shoot from the beginning.

its hard for me to convey by typing but i think this might be the reason for the raw+jpg
i still understand what ever one else is saying ...im just looking at it from a different prospective

[pshphoto]

No, but a discussion is always good...

Presuming that advanced amateurs and entry level pros are in the majority going to prefer .jpg (which I don't agree with, BTW), exactly what damage would there have been in giving the RAW button the ability to toggle from RAW to .jpg, instead of just .jpg to RAW? This is a feature that seems to be pretty poorly thought out and implemented, although of course I am not party to the discussion that went on behind it.

I don't believe that anyone who describes themselves as an advanced amateur or entry level pro would be particularly scared of very, very simple post processing. If the idea of converting from RAW to .jpg, even without any adjustments, is intimidating, then something like cropping or adjusting levels would be truly frightening.

I mean, the camera comes with Pentax's Photo Browser software - all you have to do is bulk select all the RAW shots you took and then choose "extract JPEG".... Done!

That has nothing to do with those who say they PREFER to shoot in .jpg for various reasons. That's a matter of choice. The difference here is, the way the RAW button is set up, for the person who shoots RAW the majority of the time, the RAW button is useless.

If they can't or won't use and read the included software and manuals and see that bulk file format transformation is about a two click operation, then they're probably not going to have a lot of success with the camera to begin with. Certainly no more than if they had stuck to the point and shoot world - which is capable of producing some very fine imagery itself.

Furthermore, even if the firmware allowed the RAW button to be used by RAW shooters the same way it is set up for use by .jpg shooters, that wouldn't affect .jpg shooters in the slightest. They don't HAVE to shoot in RAW if they don't want to - they can stick with the default .jpg image capture the camera came with, and use the RAW button as it currently exists.

Well, I do something very similar to that every day I'm working in the field - pictures of wells, risers, injection tanks, headers, etc. Doesn't take long to fill up a 4 Gb card while shooting in RAW. So I don't have to imagine how long it takes to convert them to .jpgs - I know.

It goes something like this:

• Open Pentax Photo Browser and browse to folder holding RAW's
• Hit <Ctrl><A>; alternately go to Edit-->Select All
• Right click and from the drop down menu select "Extract .jpg"

Now, there's no image adjustment in that process. But I see no difference in having to adjust a RAW in postprocessing than having to adjust the same photo if it were a JPEG.

So, it doesn't take any time at all set up the conversion, and the computer does it very quickly - doing a bulk rename at the time if I so wish. I just happen to use the Pentax (Silkypix) software because that's what came with the camera, but there are numerous software solutions that will do bulk RAW --> JPEG conversion.

Given all of the above, I don't think arguing that RAW would be too complicated and conversion from RAW to JPEG takes too long holds a lot of water.

So... users should have to upgrade to a new camera instead of Pentax doing a firmware upgrade to fix this oversight? That makes about as much sense to me as making JPEG an afterthought in the new Pentax top end cameras using the rational that if people want JPEG they can just downgrade.

I can live without the RAW button doing anything useful. But if it would cycle between RAW and JPEG for RAW shooters, I would probably use it once in a while.

What I was try to get across is that the camera SEEMS to be marketed towards many first-time byers of DSLRs, who don't know about RAW. I do use Pentax Browser/lab for converting my RAW images. Can't afford Lightroom/CS3, I also use a lot of freeware. When I batch converted the 500 shots I did, it took about 1/2 an hour. I also batch converted to 16-bit TIFFs, which took over an hour. No processing, just conversion.

I DO agree that is was a silly thing to be overlooked, making the button programmable to allow RAW only, and a firmware update would certainly be welcomed. It was poorly thought out and should have been included. But it appears the K10 has been left in the dust, and we who do want those types of features will have to upgrade. Sorry if I made it sound like someone saying "stop complaining and deal with it". Didn't mean that at all.

[Rick]

What I was try to get across is that the camera SEEMS to be marketed towards many first-time byers of DSLRs, who don't know about RAW.

Well there's another discussion.

I'm curious why you would think that - beyond JPEG being the default mode for the camera when it arrives new in the box? My K10d was my first digital camera from 35mm; I didn't know anything about RAW except in the vaguest of terms, but it was just another one of those things on my list of things to learn about when I moved to the digital world.

I never really thought about it in the terms you mentioned. I always assumed that learning about digital issues and then making a choice about how you were going to implement them into your photography was just part of the move to digital.

[pshphoto]

Well there's another discussion.

I'm curious why you would think that - beyond JPEG being the default mode for the camera when it arrives new in the box? My K10d was my first digital camera from 35mm; I didn't know anything about RAW except in the vaguest of terms, but it was just another one of those things on my list of things to learn about when I moved to the digital world.

I never really thought about it in the terms you mentioned. I always assumed that learning about digital issues and then making a choice about how you were going to implement them into your photography was just part of the move to digital.

It was just my impression because of the low level marketing that Pentax did. Nikon and Canon have always marketed and catered to the professional community. There were a few ads out from Pentax, but no where near what the giants were putting out. And it's been that way for a long time, at least that's the way I see it. I had a Nikon Photomic Ftn back in '72, at the time blowing away all competition. Pentax was in the game, but Nikon was known as the "Professional's" camera. Pentax, except for the LX, didn't really get marketed as a pro camera. In fact, the K1000 was always thought of as the ideal student's camera. It was just my impression from those early years that Pentax was a player when it came to digital, but certainly not one of the giants.

I've always liked Pentax glass, and the bodies are rugged, but you didn't see many on the sidelines at NFL games.