RAW or M RAW ????

[Darren Turner]

On my Canon Eos 7D I have a loads of options for image quality straight out of the camera. The 2 I am interested in today is

RAW - 18 million pixels - 559 photos per 16gb CF Card (I usually use this setting all the time)

M Raw - 10 million pixels - 803 photos per 16gb CF Card

I have 3 x16gb Cards and 4 x 2gb cards to take on holidays with me for 2 weeks. The main aim of the holiday for me is travelling around taking photos of everybody and everything lol

I will have a small netbook pc to take with me to unload photos onto and sort through any junk ones.

Obviously if i choose M Raw i can take more photos per card which will probably come in very handy, but at a lower resolution is this really an issue, lets face it many camera that folks use today are around 10MP with amazing results

So my question is which setting should I use RAW or M RAW & Why………….?

I will also have the Fuji x10 with an 8gb & 16gb SD cards this will give me around a further 1200 photos.

Thanks for your input

Daz

 

[Ralph Thornton]

I guess it depends on what you plan to do with the images. Me, I want the highest quality and largest file I can get because I print my best images large. Like 30 inches wide. Also the larger files allows for more cropping ability. I'd suggest buying larger cards if the number of pics on the card was the problem. Of course the larger files take more room on the hard drives too so that may be an issue. To combat the space problem I suggest being more diligent about remove those images that don't measure up to the quality you want.

 

[Chris Dodkin]

Darren - I've seen posts on DPR that show image quality issues from M RAW files, due to the in-camera reduction in the amount of image data.

I'd always go with the highest quality file - you have plenty of cards and a notebook, you'll be good to go.

 

[Hamish Gill]

you must get 450 shots on a 16gb card?
I get 600 from my 12mp camera ... thats loads ... how many photos are you think you will take?

 

[Darren Turner]

cheers folks, sounds like Raw @ 18mp will be best then by the sounds they i am really well covered for cropping and printing in future.

Hamish i get 559 photos per 16gb CF Card i reckon i will take ALOT lol

Daz

 

[Larry Bolch]

I can understand camera-phone refugees on Facebook shooting at low resolutions since they are simple records of events, friends-shots and "I was there" shots, rather than being stand-alone photographs. With photographs as a matter of pride, one wants the best possible quality under the circumstances.

At the moment, I am processing a selection of images from a decade back, and I would love to have the quality my present cameras provide. As usual, I was shooting a lot of "available darkness" stuff and the cameras back then were profoundly noisy at ISO400. Amazing how far we have come.

Compared to those days, storage is very inexpensive. For the price of my 64MB card back then, I could buy at least three 64GB cards—three thousand times the storage for the same price!! With a notebook, you can off-load daily, so a large card is not critical. Do take a small USB hard-drive along for backup. They are tiny and light and double your chances of returning home with your images.

 

[Larry Bolch]

After writing the previous message, a thought occurred to me, and I checked it out. There are now external solid-state drives. Not cheap, but very fast and extremely secure with no moving parts. Drop a hard-drive, and chances are it is history—along with your image files. If one is going to be doing the trip of a lifetime, I would certainly figure the cost of such a drive into the budget. In time, "cloud" storage may become the most practical means of back-up, but at the moment and external SSD seems like the best compromise all around.

 

[Darren Turner]

thanks for your thoughts Larry. I dont think a SSD (£££££££ GULP) will be required as 2 weeks in south Spain is hardly the trip of a lifetime, more like a cheap 2 weeks with hopefully a spot of winter sun.

Having the netbook i can back up my cards just in case

Cheers

Daz