Forgot Password
Pentax Camera Forums Home
 

Reply
Show Printable Version Search this Thread
05-25-2009, 07:52 PM   #1
Veteran Member
pete_pf's Avatar

Join Date: Nov 2007
Location: Toronto, Canada
Posts: 599
if only Pentax made a RAW P&S

was at the photo show this weekend, and saw the Panasonic LX3 and was absolutely floored there were P&S's which had RAW. if i had the funds, i would be all over that camera. would be so nice to have RAW capability when going somewhere a huge camera bag isn't so ideal. i then went over to the Pentax booth and asked if Pentax would ever make a RAW p&s, but they didn't seem happy about my question. maybe it was a long day? lol

05-25-2009, 10:55 PM   #2
Veteran Member




Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: San Francisco, CA
Posts: 452
I never really understood why more P&S cameras don't offer RAW compatibility. My understanding is that the camera is producing the data anyway, so I'm guessing it's an issue of memory buffering or speed. Many of the Canon Powershots can be hacked with CHDK which is listed as having a RAW file save option (haven't tried it myself). I wonder how hard it would be to reverse engineer the Pentax P&S firmware?
05-26-2009, 01:58 AM   #3
Site Supporter
Site Supporter
newmikey's Avatar

Join Date: May 2007
Photos: Gallery
Posts: 2,279
QuoteOriginally posted by tybeck Quote
I never really understood why more P&S cameras don't offer RAW compatibility. My understanding is that the camera is producing the data anyway, so I'm guessing it's an issue of memory buffering or speed. Many of the Canon Powershots can be hacked with CHDK which is listed as having a RAW file save option (haven't tried it myself). I wonder how hard it would be to reverse engineer the Pentax P&S firmware?
Many P&S's have to use their JPEG engines to do heavy processing on the RAW images. To have those very RAW images available to the user would certainly reveal the inadequacies of the sensor, the optics or the exposure mechanics to the user. My guess is that the manufacturers do not want that.
05-26-2009, 05:18 PM   #4
Veteran Member
Buddha Jones's Avatar

Join Date: Sep 2006
Location: Charlotte, NC
Photos: Gallery
Posts: 2,587
I am sure it is coming, I think that PENTAX will step up their game on all fronts, they almost have to.

05-26-2009, 07:12 PM   #5
Veteran Member




Join Date: Nov 2006
Location: America's First Wilderness
Posts: 529
I've been shooting the Canon G series in RAW for a long time. It's actually why I went that route.

Pentax did have a camera that had a hack (A40 maybe) to allow you to shoot RAW. However, it reset each time the camera was turned off, making it virtually useless.

These cameras can shoot RAW, Pentax just chooses not to enable it. My guess is most people shooting these don't understand RAW and it would be a headache for customer support, and user reviews.

G series, Nikon upper ends shot RAW, some Panasonics, and some upper end Ricohs, I thinka few older fujis did as well. Not much else in the compact end. There were some bigger camera (Minolta A1/2) that shot RAW but those are SLR size!

QuoteOriginally posted by impete82 Quote
was at the photo show this weekend, and saw the Panasonic LX3 and was absolutely floored there were P&S's which had RAW. if i had the funds, i would be all over that camera. would be so nice to have RAW capability when going somewhere a huge camera bag isn't so ideal. i then went over to the Pentax booth and asked if Pentax would ever make a RAW p&s, but they didn't seem happy about my question. maybe it was a long day? lol
05-26-2009, 08:08 PM   #6
Veteran Member
Jasvox's Avatar

Join Date: Oct 2007
Location: Melbourne, Australia
Posts: 3,107
There are several small P&S cameras out there which will capture Raw files. Are any of them Pentax, no....but that's not really important if you really want/need one.

Jason
05-26-2009, 08:12 PM   #7
Pentaxian




Join Date: Jan 2009
Location: Frozen white North
Photos: Albums
Posts: 1,128
I had an old Olympus C-700UZ that would capture TIFF files. Of course memory cards around that time were ~64MB but it did produce uncompressed TIFF images.

05-27-2009, 10:04 PM   #8
Site Supporter
Site Supporter




Join Date: Sep 2006
Location: midwest, United States
Photos: Gallery | Albums
Posts: 5,711
Not as useful as you think, and I shoot raw all the time on dslrs. Have the pana LX2. There is a small amount of improvement vs jpeg (not near as great as dslrs). There is also a long time delay while raw is saving to card. Hardly ever use it. Might have helped if it just did raw and not raw + jpeg. This 10 Mp camera takes bigger files than K10D on raw! And does it much slower.

Thanks
barondla

Check out POINT & SHOOT 18 WINNER in compact camera forum. Enter #19. Any brand camera. Ending soon. Enter now!
05-28-2009, 08:25 AM   #9
Veteran Member
rfortson's Avatar

Join Date: Sep 2006
Location: Houston TX
Photos: Gallery
Posts: 2,129
I had a Kodak P850 (pre-dSLR for me) that shot raw, and I just bought a Canon G9 because it shoots raw+jpeg.

However, as someone else mentioned, the capability to shoot raw with a P&S isn't as much of advantage as it is with a dSLR. I guess there's only so much you can do with a tiny sensor anyway. I don't see that you can recover as much exposure or white balance information.

Of course, it's nice to have the option.
05-29-2009, 11:14 PM   #10
Senior Member




Join Date: Apr 2007
Location: OC, California
Posts: 147
My tiny p&s Minolta F300 can shoot tiff.
05-29-2009, 11:41 PM   #11
emr
Guest




P&S raw isn't really something new. My first P&S camera had it already (a Canon S40). I think the reason for excluding it in addition to some potential manufacturing cost is that 99% of people who shoot with pocket cameras don't use raw and could actually be confused with it. "Why on earth can't I do this and that with the pictures I shot and transfered to my computer and why are the files so big...". The real market demand for P&S raw is IMHO miniscule. Only some photo enthusiasts (like us) would probably use it in their secondary or tertiary camera.
05-30-2009, 04:37 AM   #12
Veteran Member
ytterbium's Avatar

Join Date: Jan 2008
Posts: 1,076
My Fuji S5600(5200) Had raw.
Very useless. You had to go trough several menus to enable/disable it. It took 3 seconds between shots, and had many RAW UNRELATED(like wb) functions disabled (timer, bracketing, EV comp. i guess and similar).
Only gain was the images was without noise filter which produced painting like jpeg's over iso100 even if 200 and 400 had acceptable noise. Otherwise DR wasn't any greater and there were no other advantages.
05-30-2009, 11:30 PM   #13
Inactive Account




Join Date: Jul 2008
Location: Vancouver, Canada
Posts: 1,100
QuoteOriginally posted by ytterbium Quote
My Fuji S5600(5200) Had raw.
Very useless. It took 3 seconds between shots
That is fast! I had a Nikon CP5700 that took 45secs to write one 5MP RAW image. JPG was 4:1 compression on that Nikon and very close to the RAW image.
06-21-2009, 06:57 AM   #14
Inactive Account




Join Date: Jun 2009
Location: Australia
Posts: 7
QuoteOriginally posted by zenimagery Quote
...and saw the Panasonic LX3 and was absolutely floored there were P&S's which had RAW
I have an LX3 and the ability to shoot RAW was one of the reasons I bought it. The main one was the lens... super wide and fast for a P&S, it's a 24mm equivalent at f/2.0

After using it for a while, I no longer care about the RAW and in fact shoot JPEG's almost always with it. This is due to 2 things:

1. The quality is really amazing and I've learned to adjust the settings in the camera to give me beautiful pictures in both color and black & white. Since this isn't my "real" camera, most of what I do with it works well in JPEG and it actually saves me a ton of time in post. Today I rarely need to do anything to the files before printing/uploading.

2. The RAW file of the LX3 isn't really a RAW file anyway. Silkypix (the software that comes with the camera) corrects for lens distortion, I believe Lightroom does the same, and Aperture (which I use) doesn't even recognize them.

I actually wrote an article on RAW vs. JPEG and why I now shoot both instead of exclusively RAW like I did for years if you're interested.
06-21-2009, 07:01 PM   #15
Site Supporter
Site Supporter
ManuH's Avatar

Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: Montreal
Photos: Gallery | Albums
Posts: 1,249
QuoteOriginally posted by Gabe Quote
I have an LX3 and the ability to shoot RAW was one of the reasons I bought it. The main one was the lens... super wide and fast for a P&S, it's a 24mm equivalent at f/2.0

After using it for a while, I no longer care about the RAW and in fact shoot JPEG's almost always with it. This is due to 2 things:

1. The quality is really amazing and I've learned to adjust the settings in the camera to give me beautiful pictures in both color and black & white.
I guess Panasonic fixed their annoying noise reduction then. That's why I'm still using RAW on my FZ8, the other benefits are not that big but at least I can bypass the awful Venus III NR. One good thing about the LX3 is that it has a real buffer and raw is not as painful as with previous models where the camera would be inoperable during the long save of the raw file.
Reply

Bookmarks
  • Submit Thread to Facebook Facebook
  • Submit Thread to Twitter Twitter
  • Submit Thread to Digg Digg
Tags - Make this thread easier to find by adding keywords to it!
camera, digital camera, pentax, pentax cameras, point and shoot
Thread Tools Search this Thread
Search this Thread:

Advanced Search


Similar Threads
Thread Thread Starter Forum Replies Last Post
K7 & KX picture comparision take 2 (RAW & Jpegs available for download) Daemos Pentax DSLR Discussion 65 10-29-2009 11:13 PM
Pentax K-7 & K-X: My picture comparision (RAW & JPEG) Daemos Pentax DSLR Discussion 24 10-27-2009 09:18 PM
RAW made easier to view cupic Digital Processing, Software, and Printing 5 10-05-2008 07:17 PM
RAW, New Computer, PSE5 & 3.7 RAW Plug in. Ed in GA Digital Processing, Software, and Printing 6 11-20-2007 04:43 PM
Pentax raw files DNG & PEF and Wbal. Photomy Pentax DSLR Discussion 1 03-26-2007 09:19 PM



All times are GMT -7. The time now is 03:10 AM. | See also: NikonForums.com, CanonForums.com part of our network of photo forums!
  • Red (Default)
  • Green
  • Gray
  • Dark
  • Dark Yellow
  • Dark Blue
  • Old Red
  • Old Green
  • Old Gray
  • Dial-Up Style
Hello! It's great to see you back on the forum! Have you considered joining the community?
register
Creating a FREE ACCOUNT takes under a minute, removes ads, and lets you post! [Dismiss]
Top