New DSLR owner, storage/editing questions?

[Groucho]

What program do you use to sync your hard drives??? I've made so many changes to my main HD after already backing up a lot of it. And I bought my 2nd backup at at totally different time; so not everything is backed up to there.

And good question about the safe. I have no idea though. But at least if the fire instantly hits that area, I'm hoping I can grab the safe in time; without having to worry about a non-fireproof one instantly feeling the damage. And yes, I'm trying to think like a superhero.

In the PC world, you may want to give Microsoft's free SyncToy a look - it's a pretty competent and easy-to-use program to keep folders in sync.

You are correct about the RAW. Although you won't have to do major work to them, you'll have to make a couple of quick adjustments (I.e. Contrast, saturation, sharpening). Using a program with presets will help to speed up that process. Shooting in RAW+Jpeg will produce jpegs that are processed with the camera's settings. So it'll have a decent contrast, saturation and sharpening. The RAW files will sometimes look a little flat and unsharpened.

Some of that depends on the raw software you use. If your camera came bundled with software, it will often recognize the information that your camera saved in terms of the in-camera settings. In the Pentax world, their bundled software is a modified version of Silkypix and produces output pretty close to what you'd get by shooting JPG in the first place, reading the proprietary makernotes that all the OEMs put in their RAWs. If you're using Lightroom, you can set the import preset to be fairly similar to how you would in the camera (ie, adjust sharpness, contrast, saturation, etc like you would on the camera) and that way everything is already fairly "punchy" or however you like it without needing to tweak anything.

Of course, there's always something that you may want to tweak... then something else... it's dangerous to your free time!

 

[SrisonS]

In the PC world, you may want to give Microsoft's free SyncToy a look - it's a pretty competent and easy-to-use program to keep folders in sync.


Some of that depends on the raw software you use. If your camera came bundled with software, it will often recognize the information that your camera saved in terms of the in-camera settings. In the Pentax world, their bundled software is a modified version of Silkypix and produces output pretty close to what you'd get by shooting JPG in the first place, reading the proprietary makernotes that all the OEMs put in their RAWs. If you're using Lightroom, you can set the import preset to be fairly similar to how you would in the camera (ie, adjust sharpness, contrast, saturation, etc like you would on the camera) and that way everything is already fairly "punchy" or however you like it without needing to tweak anything.

Of course, there's always something that you may want to tweak... then something else... it's dangerous to your free time!

Thanks for the suggestion.

And you are definitely right about the type of PP software affecting what you need to do with your RAW shots. I used to use Canon's software, and the RAW pics would look pretty decent. But then I started using Lightroom, and it was just like "what the H??? These don't look too good." And with Lightroom, you can import your pictures to have them somewhat already calibrated to your camera settings. But I still don't care for the Canon ones. They're not bad, but they don't look too much better than the Adobe default setting. So I haven't even bothered with them.

 

[Wadecool]

In the PC world, you may want to give Microsoft's free SyncToy a look - it's a pretty competent and easy-to-use program to keep folders in sync.


Some of that depends on the raw software you use. If your camera came bundled with software, it will often recognize the information that your camera saved in terms of the in-camera settings. In the Pentax world, their bundled software is a modified version of Silkypix and produces output pretty close to what you'd get by shooting JPG in the first place, reading the proprietary makernotes that all the OEMs put in their RAWs. If you're using Lightroom, you can set the import preset to be fairly similar to how you would in the camera (ie, adjust sharpness, contrast, saturation, etc like you would on the camera) and that way everything is already fairly "punchy" or however you like it without needing to tweak anything.

Of course, there's always something that you may want to tweak... then
something else... it's dangerous to your free time!

My Nikon D3100 did come with bundled software, its called ViewNX2 but I have yet to figure it out. Do any other Nikon owners out there have this software, and is it any good? Do I even need to buy another processing program?