Basic Photoshop settings for RAW JPEG conversion.. EX2F?

frascati wrote:

Ah, so, you know how this camera has this nice fast lens. Well, performance isn't always great wide open. Are all your shots wide open? Try stopping down a bit, it will also give you more depth of field making things sharper. The downside is it will be darker, so you may be at a higher ISO, may look a bit more like the old camera.

Most of the excitement and ink devoted to comparisons of these compact digitals' lenses based on speed/aperture should be taken with a grain of salt?

It should indeed.

The gushing over this was everywhere. So is it the case that this range is only useful under the most pressing circumstances with the condition that IQ must suffer?

I don't know about the "most pressing," but IQ must indeed suffer to a certain degree. You will find that almost all lenses have their performance increase significantly when stopped down a few stops.

Or will I learn to love it for subjects with a relatively flat plane of focus where background blurring is desireable?

That's a good use case. The factors affecting the depth of field are the size of the sensor (which you're stuck with for a given camera), the aperture or the lens (you can stop down for a deeper depth of field/more in focus), and the distance to the subject (at further distances the depth of field is greater). Here is a handy calculator for it: http://www.dofmaster.com/dofjs.html

Under what other circumstances is this aperture a real advantage?

For low light where you would otherwise be forced to very high ISOs and hence a lot of noise, indoors, dimly lit events, etc...  Also for drawing the attention in the photo to a particular area, people tend to be drawn to the focus point.

Would this thread have been more appropriate to the beginner's forum?

Meh, it's fine in either place in my opinion.

I wasn't aware of how near the bottom of this learning curve I really am. Coming from the previous camera is like starting anew.