For probably 80-90% of what we shoot there is no point in having a 21mp file. There are some images where having those mp matters, but its likely the minority for most of us. When I'm shooting serious landscapes or when I expect to crop or print big those are the times when I might actually need 21mp.
I shoot weddings and portraits. For less-important parts of the wedding (preparations, reception, etc), I shoot sRAW1. For more-important parts (ceremony, portraits), it's full RAW.
Even with fill size conserving practices, I still shoot nearly 150GB of data every month during peak season.
I shoot Large RAW and Large JPEG. When I am just goofing off, I would do Large RAW and Small JPEG. This allows me the flexibility to process quickly and go back to the RAW files at a later time.
Thx stanj,
One source of error will be eliminated for me in the future: setting the quality back to normal RAW after shooting the hi's... I'm still on lr2/cs4. Is a release date for lr3 already set (lr3 beta could not handle old catalogs)?
HK
For the serious amateur, the desire to save space has a legitimate argument. In the case of the professional, when costs for extra cards and external hard drives can be passed to the customer, there is no reason to compromise on space. Since I shoot professionally quite often, and other times as a serious amateur, I have invested in the necessary space to shoot my 5D Mark II at rull res all the time. Therefore I can use the full size on pro and non-pro circumstances (non-pro being when I don't get paid) because I have passed all that cost for extra space to my customers in the pro area. And "all that cost" is really not that much. A few 2TB external drives for backup is nothing for a regular wedding photographer, and once you have a few 8 or 16GB cards around who cares? Get the best image quality so that when that one amazing shot comes, you have the best version possible with your equipment.
hongkietan wrote:
Thx stanj,
One source of error will be eliminated for me in the future: setting the quality back to normal RAW after shooting the hi's... I'm still on lr2/cs4. Is a release date for lr3 already set (lr3 beta could not handle old catalogs)?
HK
I use sraw for timelapses where I am only going to output is hd video anyways, no need for larger files, having the sraw gives me the flexibility of color correction and fixes I do not have with jpeg.
There is thread going on in the wedding forum about this.
I tend to use it for the reception.
The idea that this is for a serious amateurs only is a statement made with a blatant disregard of their peers.
I'll bet you guys will start crying if you learn some even might use...gasp...jpegs.
molson wrote:
Grow up...
Care to post anything relevant in this discussion?
My point was that some folks are way to judgmental. Meanwhile, there are plenty of photogs that shoot in other than full size RAW, and even JPEG with great success.
Why they do it? A healthier discussion might shed some light on that.
Just because one person doesn't see the benefits of sRAW, another photographer may. Why else would Canon invest the time to add it to the firmware?
By the way, are you sure Canon is doing some post-processing when saving them as sRAW and not just dropping some sensor pixels from being saved? Anyone have a link to information that shows Canon is doing something to the images before saving the sRAW? And I am not talking about the embedded JPG in the sRAW.
deepbluejh said what I was going to. Having the sRAW options is great for weddings, especially on the 5DII at 10MP. (I don't use it on my 1D III since the camera's full res is already 10MP)
The prep shots and reception are never going to be blown up to poster size prints from your client. They are at most going to be 8x10 size or equivalent in an album. There is no need to slow down your computer in post processing for files larger than you need, espcially when you still get the RAW flexibility. I do shoot full RAW for the ceremony and portraits, although I know others who would use sRAW for the entire wedding.
