Raw isn't really needed to take good photos, but is better in certain applications. Thats odd that your aperture mode selects the iso?? Never heard of that. Shoot as low as possible with the iso for best results. With the right settings those photos would be awesome. Nice job on that.

it had the iso setting on auto, and i couldnt make the color adjustments any smoother because they were shot in jpeg and saved a couple times.

I have to slightly disagree, shooting RAW might not be needed to take good shots, but is essential to taking GREAT shots. The camera still makes decisions, which you can't control, for every other format except for RAW. RAW+jpg is only way I shoot so I have thumbnails. If you can shoot in RAW then by all means always shoot in RAW so you have total post production control.

right, changing things like white balance or using selective color in PS causes so much noise to appear. editing in RAW is the only way to go for GREAT pics.

that doesnt look bad at all for ISO 1600 at that resolution :)

nice work

Yes, great photos do require raw format and raw is best for editing . Full control is there if you want it. When shooting in manual you have full control of all settings. The only time the camera will make choices for you is in auto mode. When shooting in aperture priority only the shutter speed is made by the camera. And when shooting in shutter priority it's the aperture thats decided by the camera. Actually program mode is quite nice, as it makes the choice for both aperture and shutter and does quite a good job at it. Exposure, iso, white balance, flash etc are all controllable by the shooter.

I wasn't referring to those settings. When you take a photo, even in full manual mode on the camera, if you are shooting a jpg the camera automatically makes slight adjustments as to what it thinks the photo should look like, more advanced settings that you edit in RAW, the camera is doing that for a jpg. If you ever shot in RAW+jpg you can look at the exact same photo you took and the jpg looks different than the RAW file. It isn't just a more editable file, it's actually different. Although it's minor adjustments it's still not the exact same photo side by side with the RAW and the Jpg. The camera makes way more decisions for you than you think even when shooting full manual if not in RAW.

New wallpaper!! Thanks. Gorgeous shots.

moral of the story: if you are going to edit in the fullest regard and want FULL control over every aspect of the shot, shoot in RAW and manual mode.

I see. I have never looked that closely I guess. Unfortunately my camera doesn't take both at one time, as it is a relatively inexpensive DSLR.

Even old basic models have this option..

To get back on topic, sorry for the side tracking, to be at 1600 that's not a horrid amount of noise.

no not at all

Noise
 

Well I was going to post some pics of my own but after seeing these I am too embarrassed!! Great shots!! I went out shooting the other day but the foliage has passed and so got basically the car but nothing around it to create the surrounding atmosphere. :ugh2:

Regarding a comment about noise..you said


I could be wrong but as far as I know you would have to use JPEG compression at some point to send the files over the net and I dont think any website would care to host any other kind of files other than JPEGs and so that would cancel any advantage you might have had originally shooting in RAW. Maybe the webmaster here could enlighten us on this?

However, its easy to get rid of most JPEG compression noise with a number of programs including Noise Ninja. But I bet 99 out of 100 viewers would not notice it.
Again, great work! Maybe these will be on the cover of the next Nissan brochure!

Im finally back behind a decent monitor, the composition is great i like it, what i was looking at yesterday was what appeared to be a high ISO, unfortunately it was, as you said live and learn. I tend to keep my ISO down at 100 for 90% of my work just to avoid noise/grain, I change it if i want to find a different effect.

Also the higher the ISO i am shooting the more likely i want to shoot in raw, more room for correction if there is a little.