I NEED Real Ideas! If you were able to attend the Magicmeet this year...

all great ideas. i have been following this thread from afar to not seem gratuitious but you are pulling ideas that I have considered. keep em coming.

 

Thanks for leaving me out of the equation Ray! I am planning on going to Magic Meets to help Tim this year. We could have a nice little caravan out there from southern NJ!

 

Sorry Jeff! Didn't realize it was a "done deal". We still haven't worked out the details but after last MagicMeets, I think the plan was for us to be at Tim's before the event to help him get ready instead of spending the time there after the event.

 

If you do a post-process seminar, I would keep it super simple.
Like, brighntess/exposure, how to correct white balance, really basic stuff,
how to re-size for web posting, fun stuff that will get them better pictures fast, and that they can share on different boards.

I am going to go against the grain here:
I do not believe in pushing people to shoot raw. My opinion is that if they are having difficulty getting good pictures, than adding the weight of post-processing will just push them right out of a fun hobby.

(All of my 20x30 enlragements have come from the d80 set at Large jpeg, normal quality)

 

Hopefully I'm not one of those! ???

Anyway, I see RAW as a logical extension of continuing photography. Kind of like my path:

110/Disc -> 35mm manual everything -> APS SLR (yes, for a time I thought it would survive, and I liked the fact that it imprinted the shooting data on the cartridge) -->35mm AF SLR -->digital

And you used to grow from store brand/Kodak Gold to the professional style print films (try getting Reala at most stores back in the day, or the Agfa lines...) to slide film. And then maybe onto MF.

Now I'd say shooting JPG is like shooting negative film and shooting RAW is like slide films. There is nothing wrong with staying with JPG, and heck I know of one major website owner who thinks that you really won't be able to tell the difference with today's cameras - esp. since you have much more control of how the "print" film is developed, vs. the old way of figuring out which photo lab had intelligent people working behind the counter (and machines that expose the pics based on the bell curve, so what you saw in the VF isn't always what you'd get in the final.

While with RAW you have to work more on the image (in post, rather than in pre-shot decisions), but with a slide, what you saw is what you got. On both kinds you could push or pull process (increase/decrease exposure), but with slides, you (unless you had your own darkroom) determined the final colors based on the film type, speed, exposure, lighting, filters, etc., while print films could and were usually adjusted by the processor to neutral tones.

I've found that I'll spend about as much time correcting a JPG as I would with a RAW image, so there is no reason to switch back. I didn't start RAW until I noticed it as an option with PSE 2, but it was very basic, and that's when Adobe lost favor with me. (oh, we're sorry, you can't process RAW with your version, you have to buy the new version).

 

Good analogy Roger.

I have seen across the internet where people give the advice to shoot raw because you can "fix" everything. Meanwhile, the people taking the advice don't even have a firm grasp on photography basics yet. And they are thinking that "gee, the only way I can get good pictures like that guy is to shoot raw."

I am not anti-raw at all, I just cant stand the post-process time. I shot 100 pics at Osborne in raw, whittled it down to 28 I like, and it took at least 4 hours messing around. The only reason I shot that raw was to make sure big enlargements would have as sharp as lights as possible with no artifacts.

My main thinking here is Tim saying time constraint was HUGE. I think starting a raw discussion would create even more questions in that kind of environment.
Now, if he had two sessions, beginner and advanced that may be doable.

 

mousefest or magicmeets?
god willing, i will be at both.