[Earthling7]

I am about to buy my first digital SLR, the Canon EOS 350D / Rebel XT. I "discovered" iPhoto recently. I always thought, oh that's nothing for me. I know where I store my files. We were on holiday and needed to empty the SD card (another cam obviously). It wouldn't show up in the Finder, but iPhoto was more than happy to help. So, it forced itself upon me. I started playing with it and found that it's lovely. Now I'm looking into iLife 06 just for the new version of iPhoto.
So, for the 350D/XT owners out there, what is your workflow? The camera comes with applications, including a RAW processing app. Do you use those or is it straight into iPhoto? Does iPhoto even do RAW? If you shoot in RAW+JPG, will iPhoto download the JPG and leave the RAW, so that you can back them up on a DVD?
Looking forward to your sharing of experience!

[icu400]

hehe, as a hobbyist i'm curious why you are going to be shooting RAW's /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/laugh.gif I work for a student publication, and we still shoot just Fine JPEGs. Raw files are HUGE! They take up more than double the space of a jpeg. Thats not to say that they aren't better pictures, hehe, i just don't think that you'll be taking all of your pictures as RAW's after too long.
The best comparison I have is two shots of the same thing, on the same day, on the same subject. I was shooting a UT baseball game, and I took two pictures, one raw, one jpeg, both of the same batter swinging at a pitch. On the jpeg everything is clear, but when you zoom in close on things like the ball, dirt, grass, its pretty fuzzy. When you zoom in on the raw, you can literally read the name off the baseball, see the chunks of dirt thrown up by his cleats (1/8000th stops the movement really nicely). But thats also a good summary, because at normal viewing size you don't notice these things. Where RAW really stands out is when you crop something and blow it up to a large size, and that sort of thing. If you are just using a shot as is, there isn't that much need for it.
As far as workflow goes, before I had aperture it was basically just import everything to iphoto and look through it all. The only apps that i've used are iphoto, photo mechanic (3rd party workflow app, its pretty fun), and aperture. I use photoshop, but none of the other adobe image software that has anything to do with workflow.
But i'm assuming that you'll want to really just deal with iphoto. Now that they've dropped the price on aperture you could certainly get that, but you don't really have to unless you just like playing with it /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif What I would do is whenever you get back to upload something, create a new folder in iphoto with the name of whatever you just shot. Inside that folder create an album called anything you want, from the name of the event, to "masters" or something like that. Upload all your pictures to it.
After that you can go through your pictures in that album, and sort them into other albums that you make in that folder. If are taking pictures at a park, you can put pictures of different people, or different activities in different albums. They should still be in the main album, since all albums are are aliases to pictures in your library. You aren't actually moving any pictures, you are just making new links to them. If I was shooting a football game and doing this, I would have something like albums for "defense, offense, running back, kicking" etc.
Finally you can create slideshows inside of those folders if you want to show off some particular pictures. Just make the slideshow, put it in the folder, and you're done. You can show it whenever you like.

I think you'll find that iphoto really does handle pretty much everything you want it to. You won't be able to edit as well as aperture or anything, but for just organizing your pictures and grouping them, its great. It also supports keywords that you can assign if you want to, but I really just do that with photo mechanic at work, I don't do that very much with my own pictures for some reason.
Also, iphoto does support RAW's. I just spent a few minutes playing with a few in there, and it works pretty well (i have iphoto 6).
If you have any specific questions about iphoto, aperture, or even photo mechanic if you've heard much about that then feel free to ask me.

[OldToad]

As an amateur I agree with icu400 regarding the RAW. But that's a personal thing. Using RAW with iPhoto can get complicated as iPhoto creates a jpg version of it or imports the jpg that gets created along with it. Any edits get saved as jpgs. It fills up a HD quickly. If you go with just jpgs I suggest you use the alias capability of iPhoto 6. That way you can store your photos in your own designed folder system and have iPhoto only create alias files. You can have the source files on an external HD and your library in its normal location. Any edits to files create a jpg that will be saved in your library folder. Any deletions of photos from your library will not touch the source files. You'll have to do that from the Finder. This method is a great way to "share" libraries as each user can do any editing or deleting they want and it only affects their library. I've written some Tutorials to assist users in converting over to this system. Take a look and see if it will work for you. It might also work with RAW files but since I don't use them I've not tested it out. You could create a test alias library and check it out.

[Earthling7]

Thanks both for great replies! Another night of sleep and tomorrow I'll be picking it up. I'll post my findings as I find them.
It'll be great to get back into taking pictures. My old film SLR (EOS 300 (Rebel 2000)) hasn't seen much use in the last couple of years. At least the rest of the kit, lenses, flash etc will see some use again.
RAW seems like a good idea. Get a 2GB CF card and you're good for 250 pics which you can manipulate any way you like. Back them up on DVD and keep the JPGs on the hard drive seems like a plan. Still, I guess I'll have to experience it and make up my mind once I actually know what I'm talking about.
So, do you have a digital EOS and if so, do you use the Canon programs at all or is it third party apps (like iPhoto and Aperture) all the way?

[icu400]

I'm actually not lucky enough to have a canon digital, but i have 3 film canon bodies and a slew of lenses. I still use my rebel g on occasion, its a little older than that rebel 2000, but usually when i'm shooting film its my newer elan 7. But either way I can tell you one thing, you made a good choice in cameras /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif The xt is a solid camera, and you'll find great support in other canon gear, as you probably know. We use nikon digitals at work though, d70's and that sort of thing, with a d1 floating around somewhere.
I do have a canon digital elph though. I haven't installed the software yet, but i'm gonna go through today and i'll give you a run down on what I think about it. It comes with Image Browser, Photo Stitch, and some kind of RAW utility. I'm not sure what the EOS comes with, but i'll get back to you about these programs soon.

[icu400]

I'm not sure how much you're going to like canon's image browser. For viewing pictures that aren't in your library folder, for example if you want to use your own file structure to store pictures, it doesn't do a bad job. Its very laggy though, even on my dual g5. It has a nice browser window where you can select any folder and it will show your pictures in a row of thumbnails. It takes a while before you can scan through them though, if there's more than 20 or so. When I opened a folder of 200 or so, it lagged for a good 20-30 seconds before I could scroll through um. After the lag goes off though it seems pretty decent. It doesn't really do much that iphoto doesn't though, besides the nice folder selection mode. It supports ratings, keywords, and all the other things that iphoto has in it.
All in all? Decent program but not very responsive or optimized in OS X.
I couldn't get the RAW utility to work...for whatever reason. I also didn't have anything to test photo stitch with.
You should still play with any of the software they give you and see if you like it, but my guess is that you'll get used to iphoto pretty fast and never look back. After getting used to iphoto, aperture isn't much of a stretch either, if you decide you like that sort of app.

[Earthling7]

I got it! Charging the battery now. Looking forward to giving it a spin. Will post my findings.
If that's the performance on a dual-G5, then I guess it'll be a drag on my humble (but lovely) 12" PB. I have already earmarked Monday as a "walk in the park shooting pics" day. Easter's timing is perfect this year... /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

[icu400]

yep, that should be fun
that is the wonderful thing about digital, you can shooot all day and not feel guilty about the processing fee /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/laugh.gif

[JCW]

I would suggest the exact opposite of the advice you have gotten here. If you are a beginning photographer I would definitely suggest you shoot Raw just on the fact that the latitude you will have if you didn't expose the shot correctly will be much more forgiving. Digital files from Canon cameras (most all digital cameras) have less latitude than negative film meaning you have to nail your exposure like transparency film and shooting Raw gives you a better chance of adjusting the file afterwards in a software to bring back the detail found in an overly contrast scene or an underexposed file should you not expose the shot correctly.
I don't use iPhoto, I use Photoshop & DPP, if you like iPhoto then use it, the differences here are the differences that a hobbyist could care less about and therefore what I say next is irrelevant. That said I find the workflow with Photoshop's ACR correcting color & editing to be actually faster with Raw images than that of a jpegs where I actually have to open images up into Photoshop before I can work on them. Granted I'm leaving off the idea of creating custom white balances prior to the photography.

[Earthling7]

I gave it a good workout in the weekend. It performs really well, the shots are beautiful and expoure and focus are mostly spot on. I am really impressed by the speed. If you see a fast subject, you can actually get the shot, even if you have to turn the camera on. I love the fact that when it turns itself off automatically, you only need to half press the shutter button for it to spring to life.
I did experience one of the problems with digital. I had a speck of dust on the sensor and as it is stationary, as opposed to film, there was a mark on all the photos taken that day. It was easy to get off though. Must have happened during lens change. I can see this being a problem on a safari.
One thing that I don't get is that none of the bundled software works on my Mac. The capture software won't start up and the RAW editor displays black images. I have Photoshop CS which won't do RAW, so I'm stuck with JPG. iPhoto is a bit "simple", I think. It works fine and I may end up using it, but one thing bothers me. If I shoot RAW+JPG, it imports both. No way of making it import JPG only. If I shoot RAW only, my hard drive will fill up too fast. I wanted to keep JPGs on the hard drive and back up the RAWs, but iPhoto won't let me do that. I am now using Image Capture and importing the JPGs into iPhoto.
I am really happy with this purchase. We'll have a lot of fun together.

[JCW]

"I have Photoshop CS which won't do RAW, so I'm stuck with JPG."
The XT came out last year after CS so you probably need to go to the Adobe site and download an update that will allow PS-CS to read your files. Not 100 percent sure if there is an update though, I know with the 5D that you have to upgrade to CS2, but I would definitely go look because using the Browser system of PS-CS is far superior to iPhoto or any of Canon's software.
Also I'm using Canon's software on my macs just fine - fine for the crappy software that it is anyways, so it should work for you. I know this past month there has been a new update to DPP 2.1 you might check and see if you have the current version.

[Nobody]

Anyone tried a Nikon D200?

[icu400]

I really would just stick to iphoto over the canon utilities. I don't see them being able to do anything more than what iphoto can do, and they most likely will give you a bigger headache.
You might consider shooting the jpeg + RAW and then reviewing your pictures to see which RAW's you really need to keep. If you aren't going to edit it, or print it out as a 24x32, then the jpeg should do fine for viewing and normal scale printing.

[Nobody]

Not sure how that specifically relates to using a Nikon 200D! /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif
But on Raw versus jpg, I prefer Raw... once the file is safely tucked away, one can always cruch up the image to as tiny and make it as horrible as desired.