Canon EOS Digital Rebel SLR Review

Third-party RAW Software

Phase One, a leader in professional digital imaging camera backs and image-processing software, has released their C1 REBEL RAW Workflow V1.0 for Windows. This latest version in the C1 DSLR line of RAW Workflow Software supports the Canon 300D Rebel Digital SLR exclusively, and is available now for $49. A free 15-day trial download and purchase links are available at www.PictureFlow.com.

Capture One™ DSLR software has firmly established itself as the most efficient workflow solution for the high-quality conversion of RAW image files from Canon and Nikon Professional DSLR cameras. With the release of C1 REBEL, the workflow and quality advantages of the patent-pending Phase One image processing algorithms are utilized to bring out the best image quality from the Canon 300D.

Read more about the Capture One Rebel Software at:

Luminous-Landscape

Digital Outback Photo

This is the thumbnail browser screen. You can select from many different sizes of thumbnails and have just the thumbnail or thumbnails plus information displayed. Exposure information is shown in a "balloon popup" when your mouse cursor is over a thumbnail too.

You organize your images into "collections" before you begin editing the raw images.

The EDIT window with realtime image preview. On the right are the editing tools and they are organized into five groups: Capture, White Balance, Exposure, Focus and Develop. You just click on the appropriate tab to open that set of tools. Shown here is the Capture tools with the exposure evaluation histogram. You can have the highlights blink in the preview image if desired or display it in grayscale.

Editing your raw image is accomplished by going through the following steps:

White balance - adjust exposure - sharpen - save.

Getting the color "right" is the most important function so it is naturally the first step in editing your raw image data. The primary tool is the eyedropper which you click on a known gray area in the image. As you put the eyedropper on a color the software gives you hints about the selected area by saying it's either a "good" or "poor" choice.

If there is no suitable gray area then you can set the color by temperature or by using the color circle. It is always advisable to shoot a frame filled with a gray card for use later in software like C1 Rebel if you want to reproduce the color temperature at the time of capture. There is also an automatic WB button but it may not always produce the optimal results if the image is heavily casted to one color or another.

The EXPOSURE tools let you adjust the brightness, levels and color saturation of the image. You can correct exposure +/- 2.5 EV, the contrast and the saturation levels. At the top is drop-down box with selectable tone curves for: Film standard, Film extra shadow and Linear response.

The FOCUS tools are really Unsharp Mask tools - this is the key to getting the best possible print images from any dSLR camera. All of these high resolution dSLR images are a bit on the "soft" side due to the low-pass filter and noise reduction functions of the camera. Your pictures will look much better when they have been properly sharpened, especially when making prints 8x10" or larger. Just don't over-do it ...

The DEVELOP function is the final stage of image processing, here you select the desired output format - TIFF or JPEG (high, medium, low quality), the color space and the finished image size. This is a batch processor capable of handling a maximum of ten image files at a time. This should not be problem for the average Digital Rebel user, if you're a pro shooter than you really should be using the full C1 Pro software.

Canon RAW images have a high-resolution JPEG image embedded in them and the C1 Rebel software can quickly extract these preview images in JPEG or TIFF format and a variety of different sizes.