A few questions about G10 RAW

[drrich2]

Hi:

I'm pretty much a point & shooter, but my wife, a friend & I are scheduled to head to Bonaire late this coming week. I just got a G10 & the Canon UW housing for it.

I've used a PowerShot A620 before; I wanted a more current camera that could do 'RAW+JPEG' and handle SDHC cards. I've got a Transcend 16 gig Class 6 SDHC card for it, so it'll have room for RAW+JPEG & maybe some brief movie clips.

I am not Photoshop literate . I don't do 'curves,' layers and what-not. I've spent some time on the forum and basically decided that if I shoot RAW+JPEG I'll have a JPEG (albeit fine, not super fine quality on the G10), and the RAW is there in case I want to do something with it later. A 500 gig portable HD from Western Digital should let us offload from my wife's laptop so we can store the files.

I took a few RAW pics today, loaded them on my wife's PC laptop (I use a Mac desktop; she uses a PC notebook) and got into Canon's Digital Photo Professional software. I saw that the pic popped up in the viewer window looking already processed, and I could choose from amongst white balance presents (flash, daytime, portrait, etc...) and adjust sharpness, color saturation and so forth.

I noticed a 'Convert and Save' option that produces a JPEG; I take it this generates exactly the same photo file that the camera would have, unless I change the parameters? Since RAW files aren't white balanced, I assume the file includes the info. the camera would've used? In other words, you don't lose the ability to generate the same JPEG you would've gotten just shooting JPEG, if you do just shoot RAW, right?

Thing is, I didn't see an underwater white balance option, or see how one would work with that. Especially since a snorkeler photographing a coral head at 10 feet and someone photographing a moray eel at 70 feet are both underwater yet with very different lighting/white balancing needs!

What I HOPE to do in Bonaire is have the camera set to record pics in RAW+JPEG, put the camera in P (Program) mode, use it like auto mode except make the white balance custom and assign it to the Direct Print button (like was mentioned on this forum), and I bought a small white scuba slate to clamp onto my BCD so I can point the camera at it periodically and set the white balance by pushing the Direct Print button on the camera.

In theory that should give me a JPEG white-balanced for depth, and a RAW file that I can later mess with somehow. If I can understand how.

So, how you do adjust the white balance on a RAW file shot at 80 feet in the included Canon software? If my understanding for how to manually set white balance accurate and practical?

Thanks!

Richard.

 

[GLENFWB]

Hi:So, how you do adjust the white balance on a RAW file shot at 80 feet in the included Canon software? If my understanding for how to manually set white balance accurate and practical?

Not sure if I do it the correct way...but when you go to the picture you want to edit. I make sure the "Tool Palette" is selected under the "View". On the tool Palette select the RAW tab. There is Brightness Adjustment on the top, and the second one down is White Balance Adjustment. Click on the eye dropper. Go to a place on the picture where you know something is white. Can be something very small...a cover on a gauge or whatever. When you click on something that was supposed to be white, you should see it white balance the whole photo. If you don't like what it does, go to edit and hit undo. You can select another area of the photo to find something white.

That is how I have done it. I will be interested to hear if someone else has something that works.