MaciekRyd,
I started back in the 35mm film days as well, and the digital camera was a little bit of a learning curve, mostly as far as printing in a darkroom to playing in Photoshop, but it really is not that different.
As far as I can tell all the current Adobe products (Elements, Lightroom, Photoshop) all have Camera Raw included. The price on elements looks like its $99, Lightroom and Photoshop both are monthly at $10 in the creative cloud. If you are shooting images in the RAW format (dng as the
P4P saves it) using Adobe Camera Raw will allow you to manipulate the image to its fullest potential. Think of it this way, jpeg is the print, and RAW is the negative. Once I have the print, any copy of it, or manipulation of it is going to look blah at best because its a copy of a copy. On the other hand if I have the negative in hand, I can process it any way I wish and each copy is an original. Usually RAW images have a jpeg preview so you have an idea which image to select to work on. Probably the single best thing about RAW is that it is non-destructive editing, whereas editing a jpeg is destructive and all changes are forever and each time you save it, you recompress it again and again. In the event you decide you have screwed up a RAW edit to the point of no return, you simply delete the sidecar (xmp) file, and start over.
In general the RAW format will give you the ability to take an image and change the exposure after it is shot up to 5 stops over or under. I would always say get it right in the camera, but if you are 1/2 stop over or under, the raw format can help you tweak it to just the perfect spot. You can also change saturation, shadows, highlights, color temp, tint, crop and so much more. The best piece of advice I ever got when it came to editing photos was go "1/3 of too far", so in other words, when you move the saturation slider, when you feel you went "too far" go back 1/3 and that is usually right. One thing to remember is that in RAW, it's the sensor data directly from the sensor, so it always looks flat and unprocessed. Same thing for a contact print from 35mm film, but once you start adding the primary light colors, you can manipulate the general look of the image.
As far as noise goes, the higher the ISO, the more noise is introduced into the image. Think of the sensor as thousands of little buckets, when a bucket is full, that pixel is properly exposed. In low light, there are not enough photons to fill the bucket, raising the ISO raises the bottom of the bucket so less photons are needed to fill it. This means less information is in each bucket, so you get grain. That's kind of an abstract way to imagine it. Exposure is a triangle, when you change one side, you must change another to create a balanced equation (a triangle has to equal 180 degrees). So when you lower ISO, you either have to open the aperture or lengthen you shutter speed. The cameras on the
P4P, has a nice enough sensor, but it is still gimbal stabilized, so you still get movement in the camera, so if the shutter speed is too slow, you get motion blur. Its a fine balance on a moving platform of any kind. Sometimes the only solution left is to increase the light.
It sounds far more intimidating then it is. Once you learn the basics, its cake. There are a ton of tutorials on Youtube, but if you are an engineer, I think the interface is fairly intuitive and mostly self explanatory. Shooting RAW adds one more step in the process, but at the end of the day it makes for a better image.
