Your Canon(s) should have come bundled with raw conversion software. From what a friend of mine (with a Canon) has said, it's not the world's best program, but it will at least teach you the basics of how to convert and the effects of the assorted adjustments. He switched to Adobe Camera Raw, which is a free download available here:
http://www.adobe.com/support/downloa...jsp?ftpID=3275
You need to have one of the following programs to be able to use it:
Adobe Photoshop Elements 3
Adobe Photoshop Elements 4
Adobe Photoshop CS2

Elements (3 or 4) often comes bundled with printers or cameras so you may have it already, if not, then it's not that expensive to buy.

Regards,

Duncan.

Thanks,Duncan,I have now downloaded Rawshooter essential,thanks to Stephens help,and I have just sent for a 2gb card.I do have Elements 4 but only use Elements 2 on the PC.It is easier to use,and I can find my way around the prog.I was going to have a try today,but was quite overcast and could not find anything specific to try with.Will wait until the week after next.

Christine it would be interesting to hear your observations on using RAW compared to jpeg. Do you feel it makes a real difference or are the memory card, hard disk and blank cdrom suppliers the only ones who gain ?

The advantage of taking RAW is you can correct brightness, sharpen, white balance etc in the pc without any degraded. Doing those things with jpeg files will usually degrade the pictures. I always use RAW and love to adjust them with Nikon Capture 4. In camera correcting are for average photographs which likely mean human faces. I shoot birds and bees and reptiles and do not want camera engine to smooth out their faces.
http://www.birdforum.net/pp_gallery/...cat/500/page/1

We are well aware of the rhetoric used to make the case for RAW. This thread is trying to illustrate the differences. So do you have any examples where your camera has degraded the image by using jpeg to a point where it is noticable.

From the practical tests I have made there is no clear advantage for me to change to using RAW 100% of the time. I would dearly love to use RAW if it gave more than a marginal improvement.

Personally I think it is questionable that RAW processing does not degrade the image in anyway. Stephen has already highlighted that Nikon are using some form of super fine loss compression method in their Compressed RAW format.

You have to remember that a lot of processing has to take place to get the senor signals into a usable image in the first place.

I use RAW all the time because when I made mistakes, quite often, I can correct them if they are RAW files. I can go as much as +/- 2 stops without showing any sign that the photo had been corected in the pc. I would like to show you such pictures but I do not know how to post my pictures here.

If the pictures are perfect in exposures etc, then you will not see the differences between RAW and jpeg. But how often do you make perfect exposure?

Pictures of small insect like this one. http://www.birdforum.net/pp_gallery/...cat/500/page/1 is very hard to set the exposure right on the spot. This Fruit Fly is 6 mm long. Even with spot metering I had to correct by 0.5 stop. I added sharpening. With Nikon Capture4 if you use jpeg file the software will not allow you to modify exposure and sharpening etc.

ruchai,

You'll find the instructions on how to add pictures to your posts here:
http://www.worldphotographyforum.com...67&postcount=1
Note maximum file size, try and keep it to less than 200KB.

Rob,I will certainly let you know after I have had a go.The memory card was on special offer from "My Memory.com".They have a discount on memory cards at the moment,and after reading that one can shoot very few pics to one card,thought I had better be prepared.Yes,it will be interesting,as I do not understand cam settings,and only use the basics in editing.But who knows,I may be pleasantly surprised.But if a camera does offer the extra facilities,then it is good to try them.There certainly do seem to be many varied opinions re the RAW prog.Some people say it is a waste of time and good Jpgs are just as good,and others say that they never shoot in any other mode than RAW.knowing my limited knowledge,I will more than likely make a complete hash of the whole set up,but at least I will have tried.So,watch this space!!.

Christine a few weeks have passed, how is the RAW processing going ? Do you feel it is worth the effort ?

No examples as yet from ruchai either.

Here is a picture taken in RAW. It was adjusted with the Nikon Capture. The original picture was ok but with a little adjust to match this particular situation was made to make iy looks better. I think it worth the effort. This is the Robberfly, taken with Nikon D50; Nikkor 60mm macro lens in our garden early in the morning.
I love taking macro of insects. I can easily find new strange models for my camera each day.