Canon G9: JPG or RAW? Why?

v steffel wrote:

The weather has improved a little. I have been able to photograph some flowers in the yard and some horses exercising at the track where they run the Little Brown Jug each fall.

After reading all the responses and experimenting, I think that Skippy Belmont and GeraldW guided me in the correct direction. I will be shooting in JPG until I run into some problems. Here are two shots:

Crocus in early afternoon sunlight

At the track in the afternoon with an overcast sky

Each photo was cropped and sharpened slightly. The horse photo was minimally post-processed.

Thanks to each of you for taking time to help.

Best,

Nice shots, good detail. You could have gotten the flowers sharper if you used a wider aperture. Small sensor cameras like the G9 suffer from diffraction problems once you get to f/5.6 or smaller (larger f-stop number). At f/8 you are not going to be able to sharpen the image in post processing enough.

Try some experimenting. Put the G9 on a tripod if you have one and shoot a scene with some fine detail in it. Start at the f/2.8 setting and work your way up to f/8 while keeping the ISO the same for each shot (aperture priority mode with manual ISO). Then look at each image closely on your monitor. You will notice the image becoming softer as you decrease the aperture (up in f-stop number). Diffraction for the G9 starts at f/4.0 believe it or not. By f/8, you cannot get a sharp image no matter how hard you try.

The secret to the G9 is to keep the aperture at between f/2.8 and f/4.0 and keep your shutter speed as high as you can. You'll get nice crisp, sharp shots that way. If you have any action in your scene at all (like the horse and driver) you should shoot at least 1/1000 sec. Don't be afraid to bump the ISO up a little to do this. The sharpness you will get will more than offset the slight increase in noise in the image, especially in bright light. Unfortunately, the G9, being a CCD sensor, does not do well at ISO 400 and above. I found that ISO 200 was about the most I wanted to use with the G9 and the sweet spot I found was ISO 125. Again, unfortunately the G9 is not a great camera for capturing motion. For that, a G15 or G16 would be better.

Cheers!