E-1 RAW Files

I was surprised to get 10.2 MB raw files from a 5 MP camera. Raw files from my 1D(4 MP) run under 4MB,

from the 10D (6 MP) around 6 MP and often under, and from the 20D (8.2 MP) 8MB or less. Olympus says

it doesn't compress raw files, yet on their website gives a 7.4 MB file size for raw. 10.2 MB simply isn't an

efficient use of my card and hard drive space, and it eats up a ton of gold CDs to archive a shoot. My

thought is to convert to DNG files--which I believe will be smaller--in Adobe Lightroom. Has anyone

done this, and if so, how was the result?

Thanks! Dan Kapsner

Dan,

 

I don't know the E-1, so this is just a guess ... Is there an option to include a jpg-image of arbitrary (or fized) size/quality into the raw-file? That would explain the 2.5 MB difference easily.

 

Rainer

Rainer, Thanks for the suggestion. That is possible, but my camera is set for raw only. I did

check the manual, and it states the size for a raw file as 10.2 MB; I guess the other figure on

the website was a mistake, or possibly I misread it. Still, the potential solution is to convert

to DNG files, and I'd appreciate hearing from anyone with experience in this.

Dan

I don't save the culls when shooting RAW, just the selects for printing and publication. I hear

ya though on burning up the CD-Rs.

 

Mark

Keeping my eyes open here, because i would like to know if it's possible. I get 13.4 MB raw files from my E-500, and think that's pretty large.

I use an E-1 and an E-300 for weddings.

 

With the E-1, my RAW file size is 10.17MB. After conversion to Jpeg with CS2, the file size is 14.1MB. I just checked this on the photo below from a Jan. 6, 2007 wedding I photographed in San Francisco, both on my RAW file and my Jpeg file of that wedding.

 

My enlargements know no limits!

 

I see no reason to use any other equipment.

Do I need a caption title?<div></div>

I tried an Adobe DNG converter tonight. ( I'd forgotten I'd downloaded before the end of

the year.) It converted 16 ORF files quickly into DNG files that are half the size of the 10.2

MB originals. As I suspected, the files are considerably smaller, though the converted files

varied in size and ranged from 5.7 MB to 4 MB. Most were in the range of 4.5 MB. While

it's another step in the process, it does free up some hard drive space and cuts down on

the humongous number of CDs required to archive RAW files with this camera. I suppose

I'll have to test a bit with DNG and ORF files to make sure I'm happy with the converted

results, but so far they look okay. The DNG converter is available free at www.adobe.com.

Best regards, Dan

BTW, nice bride shot, Todd.

Dan

Dan, Thank you. I've already filled one external hard drive and I'm now transferring photos to DVD's to free up space. I'll have to check into the DNG. Love the camera.

Hi Dan, I have been converting them to DNG for sometime now and have closely examined the same image from both file formats when converted and they are exactly the same when processed either in Adobe Photoshops CS2 raw developer or Silkypix Raw Developer(my Fav) so I would not worry.

 

Another advantage to me of using DNG is that the Dam Program I use can write all the copyright/keyword/caption and other info into the Raw file so it stays with it and saves me having to do all over again when/if i convert it to another file format.

 

Paul

Paul,

Thanks for sharing your experience with DNG. Oddly, when I spoke with Olympus customer

support about the size of the raw files they didn't mention the possibility of converting to

DNG.

Dan