Help with RAW- Did I mess up?

[merxlin]

On a recent multiday trip I downloaded all my pix from the memory card in my SP-350 to my laptop. The first day I used the Olympus Master program so have those RAW files. On the following days I just downloaded them into a folder (Windows). Now it looks like all my RAW files are only listed as JPEG's. If I import them into the Olympus program, will they revert back to RAW, or have I lost the RAW files? I deleted them from the memory card at the end of each day so cannot go back and retrieve them from there. Am I SOL?

 

[livewire]

Why don't you copy them to a backup folder and import them with Olympus Master and see what happens? Worst case you've got the backup images.

Generally speaking, you can't make RAW images from JPEGs so I don't know how Olympus software would be able to convert. But if you copied them straight from the media card and it shows them in the Windows folder as JPEGs, then you probably shot them as JPEGs. Windows doesn't change the format as it copies either.

 

[MauiScubaSteve]

In the set up menu is the power off reset option. If you do not change the default setting, changing batteries will revert back to taking jpeg's. Some 5050's have a glitch that does not allow the power off no reset function to work. With them removing batteries always resets to jpeg. I am not sure if firmware update is the cure, you may have to send them in for repair. I am just used to changing back to raw every time I change batteries, and the myModes settings all stay raw. Just a couple possibilities.

With Camedia Master it is actually quite a pain to convert from raw to jpeg. Each image one at a time with considerable crunching time by the cpu.

 

[merxlin]

Thanks for the responses. I checked the camera this morning and the settings did revert back to SHQ. I checked my power up-power off settings and there is no reset feature attached (it is a separate action from the power settings). So I reset them back to RAW, then changed the batteries. The setting did not change to SHQ. So now I am puzzled why the settings changed. Looks like the dreaded OE (Operator Error).

 

[MauiScubaSteve]

OK, when you push the OK button the screen shows me four options; mode menu is to the right. This screen can be customized some but I think mode menu to the right is stock. Choosing mode menu (button to the right of OK button) takes you to the mode menu screen, with camera, pic, card, set going down the left side of the screen. Pushing the button below the OK button three times (or the button above the OK button once) puts you in set mode. Pushing the button to the right of the OK button takes you to the first (top) line on the screen; ALL RESET. Pushing the button right of the OK button again gives you the options of ON or OFF. This is my third or fourth 5050. The first one stayed in raw from the first day after choosing OFF. The other two reverted back to SHQ every time I changed the batteries. I did one dive without changing and it was a dive I wish was shot in raw. Now I always remember to change to raw right after powering on with new batteries. I use MyModes for strobe images. Not only do I get to use the low power slave single flash, I get to chose both the card and the file format (CF / raw). The MyModes does not change luckily. I was less that particular with my last reply and compensated by being more than particular this time. Should not have called it the power off reset before, even though that is what ALL RESET does.

 

[merxlin]

OK, when you push the OK button the screen shows me four options; mode menu is to the right. This screen can be customized some but I think mode menu to the right is stock. Choosing mode menu (button to the right of OK button) takes you to the mode menu screen, with camera, pic, card, set going down the left side of the screen. Pushing the button below the OK button three times (or the button above the OK button once) puts you in set mode. Pushing the button to the right of the OK button takes you to the first (top) line on the screen; ALL RESET. Pushing the button right of the OK button again gives you the options of ON or OFF. This is my third or fourth 5050. The first one stayed in raw from the first day after choosing OFF. The other two reverted back to SHQ every time I changed the batteries. I did one dive without changing and it was a dive I wish was shot in raw. Now I always remember to change to raw right after powering on with new batteries. I use MyModes for strobe images. Not only do I get to use the low power slave single flash, I get to chose both the card and the file format (CF / raw). The MyModes does not change luckily. I was less that particular with my last reply and compensated by being more than particular this time. Should not have called it the power off reset before, even though that is what ALL RESET does.

Thanks. I was shooting in My Modes so the settings should not have changed. I checked again by removing the battery, waiting about 10 minutes (much longer than when I actually change batteries), then powering up again. Still set to RAW.

 

[merxlin]

OK, I believe it was all operator error. I was able to download the first day's RAW files into Olympus Master (I didn't have photoshop on my laptop), but stopped loading them there and just into a file folder after the first day, where is appears that they are converted to Jpeg. I'll know better next time.

 

[alewar]

Once you convert from RAW to JPEG you lose quality (in order to make the file smaller) and there is no going back to RAW format.

If you want to save some space but keep the full quality, you can save the pictures in PNG format (PNG is a lossless format), but again, you can't go from PNG back to RAW either.

(I know that wasn't exactly your question, but it's good to know )

 

[MauiScubaSteve]

OK, I believe it was all operator error. I was able to download the first day's RAW files into Olympus Master (I didn't have photoshop on my laptop), but stopped loading them there and just into a file folder after the first day, where is appears that they are converted to Jpeg. I'll know better next time.

This is where I'm confused! Batch conversion of an entire folder from raw to jpeg would have required you to make a bunch of decisions in PhotoShop and would not have replaced/deleted the raw images. If you have done a search for all raw (.ORF) files on your computer and there is only the first day raw files then the raw files were never downloaded to the computer.

With Bridge we can navigate to the camera's memory card, import the image to PS, color correct, crop, resize and then just save the final product. If you chose jpeg at that time that's all that gets saved on the computer; the raw file is still only on the camera card.

I still use the moldy Camedia Master to download an entire dive to a folder for that day. Folder naming is tedious but 2008_07_28 (today) keeps all my images chronological. If I only have a couple good images I pull them out with Bridge and remember to save some kind of archival format as well as any jpeg (.psd, .tif, .orf). You could save the same image in four file formats in the same folder. P001122.psd does not get overwritten when you save as .jpg (P001122.jpg) and so on.

 

[merxlin]

This is where I'm confused! Batch conversion of an entire folder from raw to jpeg would have required you to make a bunch of decisions in PhotoShop and would not have replaced/deleted the raw images. If you have done a search for all raw (.ORF) files on your computer and there is only the first day raw files then the raw files were never downloaded to the computer......

I'll check the memory card and make sure that the RAW files are not still there, and do a search on the laptop. I might get surprised.