Should I be running CHDK on my Powershot A4000 IS

[1823alex]

I own a Canon Powershot A4000IS and was wondering if it would be a good idea to run Canon Hack Development Kit, I've tried it before and liked it for the most part but one of my questions was is it that helpful, and since I can shoot RAW files if I run CHDK, should I be shooting in RAW mode and what do I do with RAW files?

[Kyuubixchidori]

I own a Canon Powershot A4000IS and was wondering if it would be a good idea to run Canon Hack Development Kit, I've tried it before and liked it for the most part but one of my questions was is it that helpful, and since I can shoot RAW files if I run CHDK, should I be shooting in RAW mode and what do I do with RAW files?

shoot in Raw if you plan to mess with the pictures in lightroom/photoshop

[1823alex]

shoot in Raw if you plan to mess with the pictures in lightroom/photoshop

Are there any other alternatives to Lightroom or Photoshop that are free? Well I know alternatives for Photoshop are Gimp etc, but what about free alternatives to Lightroom, I'm a noob with most Adobe software but know a bit about Photoshop.

[.spider.]

Rawtherapee for example.

I was never happy with chdk raw because all raw decoder decoded the files in a "legacy mode".

I don't know if it is better now haven't used chdk in 6 years.

[Nexxus]

Raw will offer you more flexibility and importantly "recoverability" of photos (incorrect exposure) other then that its not gonna do much more then eat memory and waste time converting to jpg

I dunno if this hack, but if thats all it does I honestly wouldn't bother with it unless you are looking to get into photography as a hobby and want to learn more about the editing process. But as a "casual" photographer with a "casual, snapshot camera" I doubt it would be worth your time, and the camera sensor is still going to be limiting.

[Nexxus]

Are there any other alternatives to Lightroom or Photoshop that are free? Well I know alternatives for Photoshop are Gimp etc, but what about free alternatives to Lightroom, I'm a noob with most Adobe software but know a bit about Photoshop.

from what I can tell photoshop will do everything lightroom well, lightroom is in a more user friendly UI though and isnt as feature rich, its basicly an extremely slimmed down version of PS with the tools photographers most often use. So PS (or free alternatives) are enough

Edit heres some examples I did a few years back.

here are 2 photos pre-recovery

(from what I can tell looking at my EXIF data these were both shot with the EXACT same settings, the only difference being raw or jpg file format, the minor differences you see im unsure if they are becomes of ambient lighting changing slightly between shots or if it was the file format change)

 

This one was shot in jpg

Same photo but shot in Nikon RAW format (NEF)

These were the results after recovering the photo, the only thing that was done was turning down the exposure level in lightroom.

 

Jpg

 

RAW (nef)

 

As you can see jpg only managed to turn down the brightness on the whole photo, making the whites gray, the sky gray and not making the details any easier to see (for examples the vents in the front of the 1st porsche) since it just lowered the brightness of the whole picture. As well colours look alot more drap and washed out.

In NEF lightroom managed to intelligently lower the exposure on what needed to be lowered but it retained the whites in the car and the sky (cloudy day, ended up raining a bit that day, that being said if you overexpose a sky and it comes out white RAW will be able to recover that too, making the white sky blue BUT also keep clouds sky) furthermore despite being even harder to see the vents on that same porsche in the raw photo it will still able to recover it enough so that they could clearly be seen in the car body)

That was just the very basic mild editing though I could of done more to help it like increasing colour brightness to help make it look more natural in RAW but that jpg was always going to have that grayness to it after fixing the base exposure.

[1823alex]

-snip-

This makes a bit more sense now, I appreciate the examples too by the way. So only shoot in RAW if I plan on editing in Photoshop/Lightroom? And I'd like to do photography as a hobby.

[ShadowCaptain]

This makes a bit more sense now, I appreciate the examples too by the way. So only shoot in RAW if I plan on editing in Photoshop/Lightroom? And I'd like to do photography as a hobby.

 

Personally I always shoot RAW - but I actually shoot RAW + JPEG - meaning you get 2 copes of every shot on the camera, that means you get a JPEG great for easy sharing and uploading, and if you need to tweak you have the RAW there  (bare mine mind shooting RAW ignores most picture profile and settings etc)

 

That said, if you intend to edit your photos, just shoot RAW

[Nexxus]

This makes a bit more sense now, I appreciate the examples too by the way. So only shoot in RAW if I plan on editing in Photoshop/Lightroom? And I'd like to do photography as a hobby.

Looked at these pics again...what I did was actually shoot it in NEF and then made a raw copy to experiment with then differences since I see the scene is the exact same (this was shot in 2012 so forgive me lol

 

As for when to shoot raw..ya pretty much or its a shot you cant afford to have fuck up for whatever reason, that way if it does go wrong you can recover it.