Camera Labs

[ Apologies if this has been posted before, but new to me and it may help Nathan as well]

dcraw looks good, got a big list of supported cameras
(works with my Panasonic FZ18 ! )
and at under 500Kb for the windows build that's my kind of program, none of the bloat from incomprehensible GUIs !

By Dave Coffin, originally for Linux at http://cybercom.net/~dcoffin/dcraw/

Windows and Mac builds by Francisco J Montilla at http://www.insflug.org/raw/

runs in a Windows DOS box and is command line driven.

(later edit) PS. List of supported cameras 1/2way down Dave Coffin's page.

Malcolm.

Thanks for the recommendation Malcolm!

One quick note for new users of RAW though - these converters all do slightly different jobs on converting them, so don't assume the final output will be the same with any program. Always try to evaluate two or three to see which produces the results you prefer - and of course works the way you want it to.

So over to you Malcolm - how does dcraw compare to, say, the supplied Panasonic RAW converter? Try taking a normal photo in RAW, then posting (resized) JPEGs converted with each program...

Gordon

No one, more experienced than I, tried DCRAW then ? !

Cannon (D60) vs dcraw here :
http://www.aim-dtp.net/aim/digicam/dcraw/index.htm

UFRaw is based on dcraw (still uses it as its core, I think) and it's pretty good too.

I have a bunch of bat scripts for dcraw, but unless I need quick batch conversion, I use RawTherapee, UFRaw or Nikon ViewNX.

RawTherapee wont run in Win98/ME
needs 2000 or XP !

DCRAW runs in a dosVM

I have not yet quite figured out what UFRaw needs but I suspect it will need more than my Gimp1.2.3 lol!
(and Gimp nolonger supports win98/ME, so I no longer suggest it to people as a fav. freeware !)

Malcolm.

Are there any reasons for you against installing a Linux distribution instead of Windows 98 / ME if you use the GIMP?

Such as accounting software that won't run in, say, dosbox or something like that?

In my experience, you can rather easily tweak some Linux distributions to run on a P II 350 MHz machine with 192 MB of RAM after you install them.

There is also lightweight distributions such as TinyMe, which should run well on older PCs.

I use Arch Linux with Openbox, LXPanel, xfdesktop etc and it runs quite nicely. Definitely more stable than Windows 98 SE under heavier load.

If you'd like a list of lightweight programs to use on it, just tell me.

Yes, my modem will not work in Linux.
I have experimented with Knoppix(took me a week on&off to download the CD on dialup !!) and Puppy and one or two others, (Feather, DSL, I think were amongst them) none would handle my winmodem
At the time my PC had cost a lot of money so I was not about to open it up to replace the modem in case I let all the smoke out and cause it to stop working !

Now that it is older and could do with being replaced I may have another go if I can find a modem for it that is Linux supported.

You may well ask the legit question why do I need a modem to run Gimp or all the other Linux softwares,
well, no sooner do I boot up into Linux than I need to look up a tutorial or summat, and guess what, need to re-boot into windoze to do so,,, it got too tedious

Thanks for the pointer to TinyMe, (I like tiny apps and especially tiny apps that dont need installing or that are 'portable'). I have not met TinyMe before, will give it a try one day ( if I get the masochistic urge to try Linux again lol ! )