Raw and White balance

[victor]

If I am saving my pictures in RAW does the white balance have any effect?

There is very little in the instruction manual for my 8080.

I am assuming that raw just saves the data as is without any post processing. It would then be up to me to do any correction later on the PC.

 

[Tortuga Roja]

If you are shooting RAW, the WB settings on your camera will be used for the little thumbnail review on the lcd screen.

The RAW file that you save is not an image file, it is a linear list of all the info your camera took in when you snapped the shutter. Any post processing you do in the converter will also be saved with the raw file, but it is saved as settings (i.e. your tint was at -23, your shadows was at +3, etc.) but this does not change your original info. You cannot change this if you wanted to. That means anytime you open the raw file, you will see an image that is generated using the the original info with the last settings you saved but you can always change those settings. That is why a raw file is your "digital negative."

Hope that makes sense.

 

[kapula]

Now that makes alot of sense! I thought raw files are just bigger (no compression so no lost information) but that they don't change when editing makes raw that much more interesting. Maybe someone should include the raw way of editing to compressed jpeg pics aswell. Now it's a one way ride as original picture is discarded and new info is written over it. All picture editing should be considered as additional information to original picture but then again jpeg has not been implemented for that purpose. Propably there is a similarly editable (to raw that is) compressed picture format but my c8080 doesn't support it It does support raw but as the camera is sooo slow writing the picture info to memory card it's practically unusable (It takes around 12 secs and camera is unusable while saving. No buffer to shoot more at that time.). No hope for oly to do anything about this since 8080 is long gone and discontinued. Same thing with manual focusing infinity = 3 metres No way to shoot seascapes when autofocus doesn't work.

 

[Tortuga Roja]

Now that makes alot of sense! I thought raw files are just bigger (no compression so no lost information) but that they don't change when editing makes raw that much more interesting....

Actually most raw formats are compressed, but for some reason Olympus decided not to come up with a compression scheme. Maybe they have one on their newest cameras, I don't know. Nikon and Canon both use a lossless compression which make the files smaller (more to a card) and their write times faster and no information is lost. That was my biggest complaint with my old 5050 which I loved otherwise.