Some recent AK photo's

[Nephler]

Good ones CC!
I like the first best, with him mostly in the shade, but with his beak lit up.

[Captain Crunch]

Ed....I taught him to pose for shots like that

Barker...I'd guess that ole bird was about 50 feet above me

[Captain Crunch]

More Bigma at a couple hundred feet....it a lotta lens for the price

Its not an IS or VR and it takes a little tinkering to get good results

[Nephler]

Just a general question.
How many of you shot RAW opposed to JPG?

[warptman]

I jpeg.

[HighlandLady]

I always shoot RAW - unless for Aurorae. Then Jpeg.

[Barkingowl]

I shoot in .jpg too. Raw eats up too much space on the memory cards.

[Floyd_Davidson]

Originally Posted by HighlandLady

I always shoot RAW - unless for Aurorae. Then Jpeg.

Okay, this is intriguing to say the least.

Why JPEG for aurora, but RAW for everything else? I would have thought that aurora would be one of the most likely things where most people would use RAW, regardless of what they use for everything else, and I doubt you are doing so without a significant reason.

Personally, I sort of cheat. I shoot RAW+JPEG virtually 100% of the time. The JPEG's are only used for previewing though, and I always do my own raw conversion for any other use, even if the final product is a JPEG that looks virtually identical to the one straight out of the camera.

[HighlandLady]

Originally Posted by Floyd_Davidson

Okay, this is intriguing to say the least.

Why JPEG for aurora, but RAW for everything else? I would have thought that aurora would be one of the most likely things where most people would use RAW, regardless of what they use for everything else, and I doubt you are doing so without a significant reason.

Personally, I sort of cheat. I shoot RAW+JPEG virtually 100% of the time. The JPEG's are only used for previewing though, and I always do my own raw conversion for any other use, even if the final product is a JPEG that looks virtually identical to the one straight out of the camera.

Perhaps I am doing something wrong or the it's the settings I have at the time, or it may be the camera itself, I don't know....but when I have shot RAW Aurorae, the images are horrid - noisy, too much light-washed out, the works. I have tried any number of different settings (ISO, F-stops, metering, etc) and nothing has worked. Switching over to JPEG is the only thing that has worked. Suggestions??
I sometimes shoot RAW+JPEG, depending on whatever the subject and my mood is

[Floyd_Davidson]

Originally Posted by HighlandLady

Perhaps I am doing something wrong or the it's the settings I have at the time, or it may be the camera itself, I don't know....but when I have shot RAW Aurorae, the images are horrid - noisy, too much light-washed out, the works. I have tried any number of different settings (ISO, F-stops, metering, etc) and nothing has worked. Switching over to JPEG is the only thing that has worked. Suggestions??
I sometimes shoot RAW+JPEG, depending on whatever the subject and my mood is

It appears you are using a Canon EOS Rebel XTi, and I'm not familiar with it at all. But the usual causes of the conditions you describe, if it is a camera setting, would cause them either with RAW or JPEG.

But one possibility... except I can't be very precise about exactly what it is, just a general idea. The noise and washed out description sounds like "automatic"... almost certainly automatic adjustment of exposure by the software you use to convert the RAW data to a JPEG.

Try using the widest angle lense that you own, and set the f/stop to one back from wide open. Use manual exposure and manual focus. Set the focus just barely short of infinity. Set ISO (and make sure it isn't automatically adjusting ISO some way) to the highest value that does not produce ugly noise in the shadows. That might be ISO 400, or 800. (Try them both and see what happens! Try 1600 too, as many newer cameras can manage that too.)

The shutter speed can be varied to adjust for conditions. If you have very bright lights with moving curtains, use a shorter shutter speed to keep from blurring everything together. If you have just a big green sky, you can use a longer exposure to get more detail from the stationary display. Typical times are from 5 seconds to 30 seconds. But at 15 seconds there is just enough time for the stars to move, and no longer be pin points of light. At 20 seconds it is even more obvious, and at 30 seconds the stars will distinctly be lines. Hence you'll probably like 5 to 15 seconds, and might be able to tolerate 20 seconds.

If you shoot RAW+JPEG you'll see what the camera processing does to that. If it looks anything like decent, then try processing the RAW file. The noise and the washed out lights are probably caused by letting it try to automatically set "exposure". Since it is an almost black scene the "auto" trys to make it lighter. That is, it tries very hard to "pull the shadows out", and in the process it makes the background noise very visible. So you want to manully set the "black level" at a point that hides all the noise. Your conversion program may have something actually labeled as "black point", or you might need to use the gamma curve adjustment and pull the left side of the down to the black level.

Take a lot of exposures. It's cheap. Then look at both what didn't work and what did, and take notes for future use! If you find that ISO 1600 is always worthless no matter what, next time don't bother trying it. If you find that your f/1.8 lens set at f/2.8 just wasn't bright enough no matter what you did, go ahead and try f/1.8. More likely you'll decide that f/2.8 was bright enough, and then you might think about f/4 to see if it is sharper!