RAW

What a great file formant! I couldn't ask for anything more. Well, except for the fact that I can do just as much with a jpeg and Photoshop (or The Gimp [or PaintShop Pro {or Paint.Net}] if you prefer). As an amateur "photographer" (meaning I expensive toys called SLRs) I am pressed with the question of jpeg or raw. All the article written on the topic are inconclusive and vague if they clame to have a conclusion.

Raw is the file format where the camera, instead of converting the sensor data to a image format, stores the exact data from the image sensor. So raw, while an image file, is much more than that, it is like a negative that you could do blackroom work with and not a finished product. Because of the nature of the format, it should be superior to jpeg or whatever format the camera in question saves their images in.

JPEG is the format where the image data is compressed. The image in question is usually not as high quality as if it were saved in a raw or lossless format. This is because when data is compressed, especially audio or image data, information is loss. For music there is less dynamic changes; for images artifacts form and the images looks very bad. Fot the internet this isn't too bad because it increases load time, at the cost of some pixels (unless the site is an art portfolio, but that's another story) but for artwork, like digital photography I would much rather work with a more accurate image. Usually with High quality digital cameras (and even medium quality) however, the jpeg quality is almost identical to the raw image after it has been converted to a editable format (like .psd, .png, or .tiff).

With RAW one must convert it to the editable format. This isn't too much of a problem especially if you know what you are doing (if you don't you shouldn't shoot RAW) or if you use the "auto" settings. This takes a little bit of time, but gives you the ability to do some minor exposure adjustment as well as white balance, contrast, and tint. I guess this doesn't really have any point or conclusion other than that you should use RAW only if you know what you're doing... and I still struggle to know what to use. So my best advice is to try and keep trying to learn what best suits you....

Young Adolf Hitler (Campbell)

Recently, while perusing Digg, I stumbled upon a small news article (what a shock). The article opens saying:

"A New Jersey family who named their child after Adolf Hitler is having problems getting a birthday cake made for their 3-year-old. "

My first reaction was to check the validity and legitimacy of the website, not shock that people would name their children after a mass murderer. When I finally determined that the site was, in fact, a real news site I was disgusted. Why would anyone wish to name their child that? I understand that all names have meanings and Adolf has it's own meaning completely separate of what it means today. It once meant "noble wolf" and had no negative connotations. But when Hitler decided to be angry for sucking at art he had to go and ruin that name. So while reading I was thinking maybe if his name were just Adolf ... Campbell that there might be some legitimate reasoning behind the name. So I read on...

The cause of all the fuss, was not the individuals naming their child Adolf Hitler Campbell, but that a supermarket would not make a cake for the little boy. As the supermarket is a privately owned business they do not have to make custom cakes for anyone that requests. They have the right to decide if they do a cake for and individual, or group, even if it doesn't have questionable moral background. So, once again, the Campbells are out of line, not only by naming their child "Adolf Hitler" but for whineing about how a private company won't bake them a cake.

By this time I'm annoyed by the Campbells, not angry or upset, but annoyed. I figured that they thought they were funny and clever naming the child Adolf Hitler then complaining about the trouble it causes them. I still assumed (hoped) that the people weren't racist, and that they were just idiots. Untill I got to the end of the article:

"The couple's other two children are named JoyceLynn Aryan Nation Campbell and Honszlynn Hinler Jeannie Campbell."