exifing

I have decided right from the start to shoot my D40 in RAW mode, to ensure any post-processing tips and tricks I learn in the future I will be able to apply to all of my images, not just those since the learning of the things with the stuff.

Much to my surprise, Picasa from Google will view the RAW files, making it just as quick and easy to blog a photo or upload them to flickr. Actually, this isn’t quite true. What Picasa does is reads the JPEG embedded inside the raw file - basically the image created for viewing on the camera’s LCD screen during review. The quality and size are perfect for me, but I lose all my EXIF data (not from the RAW, of course, just from the JPEG).

What does this mean to you? Or to me? In terms of viewing pleasure, very little. In terms of image management, a whole lot. I can no longer scour flickr for images in a certain timeframe, none of them show up in the flickr camera finder as taken by a D40, and none of the lens settings are retained. Academic, at best, but still important to me.

Ways around this? Stop using Picasa. Start using Lightroom or Capture NX or some other RAW converter. Easier said than done with only 512 megs of RAM. NX is slow, and Lightroom is virtually unusable. There is also the option of setting the camera to record a RAW and separate JPEG for each shot, but that’s a whole lot of duplicate images, and the JPEGs look awful! Plus this means I would then have to actually start processing the RAW files to get them to look like I want ‘em to. The embedded JPEGs look surprisingly good on their own.

Perhaps there’s some setting on the camera to embed the EXIF into the JPEG into the RAW :\ Any experienced Nikonians out there with any tips???

[EDIT] Ok, I searched the Picasa forums and figured out the problem. While Picasa has been able to read Nikon’s .NEF RAW files for nearly three years, that’s all it does is display the embedded JPEG. It can’t read any of the EXIF data at all. Oh well, I guess I’ll just have to put RAM on my birthday wishlist!