RAW Format

[Mustang]

I shoot RAW exclusively these days for anything. RAW format has it's strengths and weaknesses, but I think one excellent strength related to photographing aircraft is the ability to adjust the exposure level more than you could with a JPEG. That can save some shots that may be over- or under-exposed.

I highly recommend Lightroom. It's expensive at retail, but find a person who will let you use their student discount and the price drops a lot! It makes post-processing your pictures very easy. The nice thing is that if you have a thousand photos from an airshow, you can batch process them so you don't have to go through them individually. Also, if you don't feel like post-processing them at all, you can just go ahead and export them to whatever format you want, like JPEG.

[Midnight Mover]

I shoot RAW exclusively these days for anything. RAW format has it's strengths and weaknesses, but I think one excellent strength related to photographing aircraft is the ability to adjust the exposure level more than you could with a JPEG. That can save some shots that may be over- or under-exposed.

I highly recommend Lightroom. It's expensive at retail, but find a person who will let you use their student discount and the price drops a lot! It makes post-processing your pictures very easy. The nice thing is that if you have a thousand photos from an airshow, you can batch process them so you don't have to go through them individually. Also, if you don't feel like post-processing them at all, you can just go ahead and export them to whatever format you want, like JPEG.

Yep, gotta check out lightroom 2

[Realbigtaco]

Yeah i used the 30 day trial, and that program rocks!  To bad it is expensive, i need to look into that student discount.

[robin990]

How much is lightroom with a student discount ?

[DaFalcon]

$99

http://www.journeyed.com/item/Adobe/Photoshop+Lightroom/21061036

[Midnight Mover]

Yep, gotta check out lightroom 2

Ok, I am checking it out on the trial. So far I think I will stick to DPP & Photoshop. Just not enough features for me