[Backpacker Joe]

Yo Thomas (and everyone else) I bought a Cannon G3. I got a 128 meg card with it and I bought another 256 meg card for it. Got me a carrying case, extra battery too. Any thoughts from you as to anything else I might need? The 256 meg card was *only* 105.00 dollars. Maybe another one of those? How about a compact card reader for my computer? Makes down loads fast and easy? Does this beast come with a firewire (or like) cable? Thanks. TB

[Tom]

[Dean]

Congrat's BPJ. Now start reading the manual so you'll know how to use it. It has more buttons , bells and whisles than my computer does. I like the movie feature as well and Tom is right on about the 256 cards. We'll have to compare notes later on.

[Allison]

Who needs a humungo card in the winter? Unless I go on a trip between now and next summer where I could need more than one 256, I'm holding out as long as possible to buy the second card. By spring they'll be $40, heck my s40 is only a couple of months old, and they got for like $26 now!

[Tom]

How much camera memory you need depends on your shooting style and philosophy. I prefer to shoot in RAW which give me a digital negative but results in larger file sizes than shooting in jpeg. Combined with exposure and macro focus bracketing (which I rarely use but others do) this can eat thru a lot of memory. I also like to take lots of pictures of the same scene, particularly when something strikes my fancy. As they say, practice makes perfect, and winter is a good time to practice.

[Backpacker Joe]

Well, looks like I just bought ANOTHER 256 meg card. Thanks Tom. You take some nice shots Mr.. TB

[Newt]

Tom...Do you have any idea as to the size difference between the RAW and uncompressed JPG formats taken with the camera? Just trying to get an idea of the # per card. TIA NN

[#19]

A laymans explaination (advantages vs disadvantages) and the difference between "RAW" and "uncompressed JPG" format would be nice too.

[Tom]

Newbie Newt, G2 RAW files average around 3 MB each while "super fine" JPEGs average around 2MB each. Not sure about the G3, but I'd think they'd be similar since it has the same 4MP sensor as the G2. Pappy, there technically isn't such a thing as an uncompressed JPG. When you save a picture as a JPEG you are actually compressing it, similar to when you "zip" a file. How much compression it does depends on the JPEG quality setting. Unfortunately, JPEG compression is "lossy" meaning you don't get back exactly what you started with when you uncompress (a.k.a. view or re-open) the picture. How much quality you lose depends on the quality setting you saved the JPEG with (it comes down to a tradeoff between picture quality and file size). Even if you save at the highest JPEG quality setting, you will still lose a tiny amount of quality. That is why people often say that every time you save a JPEG you lose quality, but it really has more to do with the number of times you have compressed (saved), uncompressed (opened), and then re-compressed (saved) the image (as opposed to the strict number of saves), as well as the quality setting that was used for each of those saves. In contrast, RAW uses lossless compression - when you uncompress a RAW file you get back exactly what you started with. Even more important, what you get back is a digital negative - things like white balance, sharpness, contrast, etc. have not yet been applied, giving you much more flexibilty to adjust those parameters after the fact if necessary. There are other advanatages to RAW, but I'll skip those since you requested a layman's explanation. The disadvantages of shooting in RAW are that you need to convert the pictures later - if you have a slow computer or a lot of pictures to convert it can be a pain. You also end up with twice the number of images (the original RAW file and a converted JPEG or TIFF). This is both a pro and a con. The pro is that you never risk overwriting your original with a lower quality JPEG. The con is that two large files are now eating up disk space on your computer. Canon's RAW converter is also cumbersome to work with. In particular, it doesn't currently have an automated tool to convert all images, so you need to manually convert them one at a time. As such, most people purchase a third party utility for ~$35 like breeze browser to automate the conversion process.

[#19]

thanks

[Newt]

Newbie seconds the thanks. Thanks Tom NN

[Backpacker Joe]

Tom, do you know of a program called ACDSee? Ive got that, and it seems to do a good job with photos. Any thoughts or opinions? TB

[Tom]

I've heard ACDSee is pretty good. I use fotoalbum which has a similar thumbnail type interface but integrates 100% with my picture host (fototime). When you have thousands of pictures hosted online it's a lifesaver to be able to manage everything on your PC and have the software sync all changes to the web with a click of a button. For editing pictures, etc. I use Photoshop. The G3 comes with Photoshop 5.0 LE which is a stripped down version of Photoshop, but has most of the important features you'll need. ACDSee probably covers the rest, but IMO nothing comes close to Photoshop (Full Version or LE) for resizing, unsharp masking, and level adjustments.

[Backpacker Joe]

Thanks Tom. Do you think that LE version will do what I need? How much is the PhotoShop full version? TB

[Tom]

Photoshop goes for about $600 . I got in on a "special offer" from Adobe to upgrade from LE for only $300 . You should be fine with Photoshop LE and ACDSee.