RAW vs JPG

[Tommo224]

Yes I did see that last night Kiwi and almost bought one too. Still thinking about it but with only 2 and a half months til our trip, I think the hubby may kill me if I don't put the money towards the actual trip lol

Last time I was there (Thursday) JB Hifi had 16gb 'Sandisk Ultra' (20mbps) memory cards for $45. I was thinking of picking up one or two after pay day (hopefully still on sale then!). Otherwise eBay also have the same ones for sale. Might be worth a look?

And if you have a laptop or eeePC at home that you can pack away, leave it in the hotel and just load the photos off your camera on to it if you're low on memory cards/space.

[Doninoz]

Holy crap, I just searched for pricing on that. $900?!

http://www.goodgearguide.com.au/revi.../p-6000/259886

You can get it cheaper than that! I paid under $700.00 for my 80Gb. Thee also other cheaper storage units around...ones that don't have a screen.

[Doninoz]

Last time I was there (Thursday) JB Hifi had 16gb 'Sandisk Ultra' (20mbps) memory cards for $45. I was thinking of picking up one or two after pay day (hopefully still on sale then!). Otherwise eBay also have the same ones for sale. Might be worth a look?

And if you have a laptop or eeePC at home that you can pack away, leave it in the hotel and just load the photos off your camera on to it if you're low on memory cards/space.

Just be careful of Ebay with Sandisk Cards...I bought a 32Gb card and when I got it I noticed that I was getting some black dusty stuff around the place where the card goes. Looking at it through a magnifying glass I notices that the card had a very sharp raised edge. I spoke to Sandisk and they asked me to send them the card...It was a fake! Fortunately Paypal refunded me. I finally bought one from Ebay from a dealer in Melbourne (Sandisk confirmed him as a reseller). I can't remember his name now though. It could have damaged my camera though so I was a bit upset.

[Obes]

You guys have converted me by explaining how much more effective raw is.

*noob comment* Isn't it more horses for courses ?
If you are confident your exposure and white balance are good and you are about to take a zillion shots, then JPG saves you time ? Or if you aren't sure you will have enough storage for the number of photos you are about to take. (A full day of shooting school sports for instance)

If the lighting is hard, you aren't sure you have the settings right, the shot is important enough that you want to be able to rescue the shot, then RAW is the better option ?

You can of course take the middle ground and do RAW+JPG (well I assume Canons can ?).

eg. If I am taking a relatively long action sequence I doubt I could fill the buffer of my camera using JPGs but I am pretty sure it fills if I do RAWs, and certainly fills if I do RAW+JPG.

[Ebdrel3]

Thanks Tommo might check JB out. Might not worry about eBay though just in case I do get a dodgy one

[kiwi]

Sean, fair call, if shooting daytime sport I just use jpeg also

[Ebdrel3]

So with the nikon d300s it has the twin card slots. So if I was to shoot in both RAW and jpeg, I can set it so the RAW can be saved onto the CF card and the jpeg to the sd card yeah?

[I @ M]

*noob comment* Isn't it more horses for courses ?
If you are confident your exposure and white balance are good and you are about to take a zillion shots, then JPG saves you time ? Or if you aren't sure you will have enough storage for the number of photos you are about to take. (A full day of shooting school sports for instance)

If the lighting is hard, you aren't sure you have the settings right, the shot is important enough that you want to be able to rescue the shot, then RAW is the better option ?

You can of course take the middle ground and do RAW+JPG (well I assume Canons can ?).

eg. If I am taking a relatively long action sequence I doubt I could fill the buffer of my camera using JPGs but I am pretty sure it fills if I do RAWs, and certainly fills if I do RAW+JPG.

Sean, I reckon that is a pretty good summary of "the needs" of one against another.

Outdoor sport where lighting is fairly good and consistent should allow for consistent exposure and colour and as you said if the operator is sufficiently experienced with their gear then the speed ( camera and card buffer for rapid action sequences ) and storage requirements favour JPEG enormously.

At the other end of the spectrum for someone like Edbrel3 who anticipates taking "lots" of holiday shots I would recommend purely raw images as it is unlikely that pictures are going to be taken at 5+ frames a second to get those "lots" of pictures, rather I suspect that over the course of the trip many will be taken in uncertain lighting with differing white balance needs.

The raw + JPEG option can work well by setting the JPEG image size to "small" for use as a preview or to create quick thumbnails but otherwise I don't see the point in filling two cards with data that should be essentially the same.

Horses for courses is a very apt description.

[kiwi]

So with the nikon d300s it has the twin card slots. So if I was to shoot in both RAW and jpeg, I can set it so the RAW can be saved onto the CF card and the jpeg to the sd card yeah?

Yes, but Id do it the other way around and save raw to a SD card and jpeg to the CF card - SD card's in high capacity are cheaper and faster ( I think) - or at least that's the config I have a 16GB SD card and a 8 GB CD Card in a D300s

[geoffsta]

I just recently took over 300 shots in RAW and it only filled the 8Gb sdcard to a bit over half full, 4.75Gb. And that was of the model aircraft. Shootng 3 - 5 shots at a time with no dramas on the D90.
I'm not sure how many Kiwi would take in an outing, but I wouldn't think it would be much more than that.

[kiwi]

lol, I take on average 400 shots per soccer game and often take 2000 in a day.

[geoffsta]

lol, I take on average 400 shots per soccer game and often take 2000 in a day.

WOW. Thank god for digital.

[kiwi]

I know a guy in the states that shoots about 20,000 a weekend doing cheer and dance. He goes through a camera every 3-4 months

[neil70]

This is were i show how much i don't know.
I mainly shoot in jpeg, as i shoot sports (aussie rules and mx). In a day at jnr footy i will take on average 1500 shots and about 500 at MX. I don't use raw becouse the time it takes me to pp is huge (I am not verry experianced at it) where i can do the days photos quicker with jpeg.
This could be becouse i dont know how to do it quicker in raw as i havent used it much but when i do it seems to take forever to pp.

[geoffsta]

This is getting more and more interesting, as this thread develops.
Can I ask whether you Kiwi and neil70 are professional TOGs or not. And is the OP a Pro or hobbyist.
I wouldn't think the average hobby TOG would take that many images.
I know that the 300 I took about 4 hours using CS5 to process, and like neil I'm not at all proficient at it.

I know this may be getting off topic. But this could be good knowledge for the OP.

[kiwi]

I'm shooting professionally, but even if I shoot sport for fun I still take plenty

I can load into lightroom, crop and flag photos from a 90 minute soccer game, 400 photos and start loading onto my website in about 30 minutes or so

[Tommo224]

I'm a hobby "photographer"

I think on my Europe trip I took only about 800 or so photos.
My Melbourne trip I took 680 photos, followed by another weekend long event where I added another 700 photos to that memory card. All JPG and that filled it up! (all in all 1430 before it said card full, I remember because I laughed)

Then when I went to the Supanova thing with some friends, I shot in raw. Over the course of the two days I took around 200+ photos on each day, being about 7.5gb (cleared the card after the first day in case!)

My camera says it can take 220 raw photos on the 8gb Sandisk card, but I took 212 last weekend on it and it said that I had heaps of room!


I've decided, since I don't ever do anything that requires me shooting more than say 3fps or whatever, I'll keep shooting in raw. And I'm going to purchase a back up memory card to carry around just in case. I'd rather have the option of raw, than risk having a photo that I wish I could edit deeply (because I got it wrong) than being stuck with a lost chance

I have some friends wanting me to take some photos of them at an abandoned warehouse in Cosplay outfits (I have friends in all kinds of social scenes lol) so I'll be taking a small laptop in case I run out of memory card space!

[I @ M]

My camera says it can take 220 raw photos on the 8gb Sandisk card, but I took 212 last weekend on it and it said that I had heaps of room!

Tommo, if the Canon system is the same as the Nikon one then the max number of photos showing as available is based on 14 or 12 bit raw images ( whichever your camera is capable of ) containing the absolute full data capacity of each image.

If you are shooting in a compressed raw format and then have fairly limited data range in each image you will be able to fit heaps more on the card than indicated.

[camerasnoop]

Here's a tip for you Tommo. RAW files are all different sizes based on the content of the image. Want to try an experiment? Take two identical images, one at ISO100, and the other at ISO3200. Is the second one bigger? I'll bet it is.

[neil70]

Tommo
I am only a hobbyist photog (hence why Kiwi can process and upload Heeeeeeeeeps Quickers than me) But when i shoot sport I am shooting at 8fps and shooting a sequence of action to get the right shot.
Of the 1500 shots i will end up with abut 10-20% good shots. The rest may be duplicates or some one is in the way as you follow the play, but you still need to look at them all.
I mainly do it for the kids, the look on their face when they see a shot of them taking a mark or laying a tackle is what makes it fun.