Canon5DMk2 - Shooting smaller file size

[c_s16]

<p>Hi everyone,<br>

I would like to upgrade my Rebel XT to a full frame camera. That being said, I am not completely comfortable buying expensive used electronics so that limits my options to the 5DMk2 (1D line is out of my price range and too much camera for me). <br>

I feel the 5DMk2 would be a good fit for me however I am a bit concerned at the large file sizes. I've read that JPEG+Raw can be upwards of 40MB for the Large size. I primarily shoot landscapes but I feel 21 megapixels is likely more than I need in 99% of the situations. I was wondering if anyone had experience with shooting at a smaller file size, for example Small or Medium. The only review I've read regarding that was from Ken Rockwell and he claims the smaller file sizes are sharper than the larger ones due to less in-camera processing. Would anyone care to weigh in on this? Also, has anyone seen IQ degradations from using the sRaw formats?<br>

Thanks in advance!</p>

[bobatkins]

<p>What does it matter. Shoot RAW or RAW + JPEG. Storage is cheap and you can never get back data you throw away. Ignore Ken Rockwell.</p>

[William Kahn]

<p>Shoot RAW, average file size about 25mb, no in-camera processing, and avoid whatever it is that Ken Rockwell is smoking...</p>

[images_in_light_north_west]

<p>Don't listen to KR first off, you are better off with more data in your images than needed than not enough, so shoot RAW, size to what you need and get a 1TB drive for $150. I love the large files, it also gives you huge crop abilities, you can crop a portrait shot out of a landscape shot and still print it at 17 x 24, you will like it.<br>

Ross</p>

[ken schwarz]

<p>I tested this myself and found that the results of shooting SRAW and resizing an image in Photoshop to SRAW dimensions were the same. I shoot RAW for the reasons that Ross gives. SRAW is nice if you want to shoot lots of frames in rapid sequence and not fill up the camera's buffer as quickly, but the buffer is pretty large so even shooting RAW this isn't a practical issue for most situations. I use a 64Gb card from Kingston that was amazingly cheap and has been 100% reliable and plenty fast.</p>

[steven_crist]

<p>Why are you concerned about the large file sizes? Speed of your computer, hard drive storage, camera throughput? I have a 1DS3 (21mp) and a 4gb card gets me about 140 RAW shots. I download into Lightroom and I might keep 25% of the shots and immediately delete the rest. Of those keepers maybe I'll print 4 or 5. My computer has 2 hard drives (250gb and 650gb). The smaller drive has the system and programs and the large drive has all the data. I have over 16,000 photos in the Lightroom library now and my hard drive is just over 25% full. I have 2 small portable USB hard drives that I back up my data to each week. Memory and storage are fairly cheap so in my opinion there is no need to be concerned with file size. Otherwise why even consider upgrading from a Rebel to a 5D2? And finally, not to pile on but I also say ignore Ken Rockwell. </p>

[ben_goren]

<p>C X,</p>

 

<p>If you haven’t figured it out yet, Ken Rockwell is a troll. He writes deliberately provocative

shit with a grain of truth to it; it’s a very effective technique for getting people to pay attention to

you.</p>

 

<p>A $60 8 GB card in a 5DII will hold well over 300 RAW exposures. A $100 1 terabyte hard drive

will hold over 40,000 RAW exposures. Storage space is not a problem.</p>

 

<p>sRAW is mainly of interest to certain rarefied professional workflows. Not only is there no quality

gain, there is a substantial loss of quality.</p>

 

<p>Cheers,</p>

 

<p>b&</p>

[art_szabo1]

<p>I don't understand your need to upgrade to a full frame camera if you want a smaller file size. That would be like moving from a three bedroom house to a five bedroom house and hiring a contractor to come in and remove two bedrooms because the house was too big.<br>

Maybe you should explain to us why you think you should upgrade. There is no shortage of qualified people here that will give you GOOD advice. It is beginning to look to me like you already have the perfect camera. There are a hundred good reasons to upgrade to a full frame, but they are only valid if they apply to the person spending the money.<br>

"smaller file sizes are sharper than the larger ones due to less in-camera processing" Did Ken Rockwell actually say that? I am not defending him, but I cannot for the life of me imagine anybody saying anything so ludicrous.<br>

Art</p>

[model mayhem gallery]

<p>I shoot with both a Canon 5D Mark II and a Canon 30D. I often shoot medium with both cameras If I am shooting an event which may go all day or something where I am going to give a disk at the end. Large and or RAW on the 5D Mark II is just too slow and too big for my onlocation work. I prefer to burn to a CD than a DVD just because more people hjave CD, faster and cheaper. In terms of quality of course RAW files when edited look much better than medium .JPG. However, if I am shooting something static like a landscape and I am using a tripod I can't tell much difference. Espeacially when printed at 8x10 or put on a website where the resolution is lost anyway.</p>

[c_s16]

<p>Hi everyone,<br>

I really appreciate all the comments and feedback. To answer Art's question, from Ken's site: "No one needs 21MP. All it does is slow everything and clog your hard drive.<br /> Try shooting your 5D Mark II at it's M (11MP) or S (5MP) settings. If you look at your images at 100%, you'll see that the lower resolution shots are sharper! Why? Because they use less, or no, Bayer interpolation." Maybe I am interpreting this wrong, but I thought Bayer interpolation was done in-camera (though this may be limited to JPEGs).<br>

As for why I would like to upgrade: I love my Rebel XT but with 8MP, it is difficult to make large prints like the ones mentioned by Ross. The low-light performance could also be better; I try not to shoot above ISO800 unless I absolutely need to. Similarly, the AF in low light sometimes hunts. I took a sample of my favorite pictures and I tend to shoot more wide-angle shots. Having a crop sensor, I thought about getting the 17-55 f2.8 IS lens however that would be spending $$$ on an EF-S lens that would not work if I were to switch to full frame. The kit lens (24-105 f/4 L) would give me a range better suited for my style. To be honest, all those reasons aside, the worst (and possibly biggest) reason I have of wanting to upgrade is that I am bored with my Rebel. I feel I have hit that creative plateau I read about in Tony Luna's article and I feel a new camera would allow me to grow more as a photographer. Of course, I understand that upgrading my gear is no guaranteed fix for either excitement or creativity. This is by no means an impulsive decision and I am still carefully researching my options especially because the cost of the 5DMk2 is not pocket change for me.<br>

Thanks again!</p>

[hal_b]

<p>You will gain the most from the 5D if you shoot in RAW, so you certainly wouldn't want to skip out on that. As the Gigabytes stack up, you could conceivably have storage issues. This is something we are all going to have to face in the years to come. Hard drives only last so long, and need replacing. Even while in use, everything needs to be backed up on redundant drives for security, and ideally you have an off-site backup kept up to date as well.</p>

<p>Prepare for the storage issue today, and you'll be covered for a few years. To make your storage solution last the longest, however, I would recommend sifting through your shots as step 1 in your post processing. Go through everything you took multiple shots of and select the best shot. If you are ever inclined to sit in one place for 20 minutes and take 60 photos of the exact same scene, work through these until you are down to the 30 best, then the 15 best, then the 5 best. When you can select the 1 best photo of a scene, that's the only one you need to keep.</p>

<p>Even if you shoot 500 photos at a time, and are shooting dozens of different subjects, you'll certainly be able to trim the keepers down to under 100, right? This act alone with enable your redundant-storage array to last 4-5 times longer than otherwise.</p>

[images_in_light_north_west]

<p>Maybe you should try a 1D3, I would by a used camera if I could examine it first, that would give you great IQ and smaller files with top of the line auto focus and speed. Maybe not wide enough for you though.<br>

Ross</p>

[philip_wilson]

<p>I tried shooting smaller RAW files on the 5DII to see if the quality was better. in fact it turns out to be worse as the quality is the same (not better) and the lower resolution means that you end up with lower quality.</p>

[ben_goren]

<p>C X quoted Ken Rockwell:</p>

 

<blockquote><p>Try shooting your 5D Mark II at it's M (11MP) or S (5MP) settings. If you look at

your images at 100%, you'll see that the lower resolution shots are sharper!</p></blockquote>

 

<p>And that, boys and girls, is a perfect example of exactly the kind of shit Ken is so full of.</p>

 

<p>Are the smaller files sharper and less noisy at 100% pixel view? Who gives a damn?</p>

 

<p>Take those two files. Make prints from them, and compare the prints.</p>

 

<p>At 8″ × 10″, you probably won’t see much, if any, difference.</p>

 

<p>But at 24″ × 36″…well, even Ken should be able to figure

<em>that</em> one out.</p>

 

<p>Cheers,</p>

 

<p>b&</p>

[brian_ellis19]

<p>In your initial question you said you were concerned about the large file sizes that the 5DMkII can produce. But then you later said "as for why I would like to upgrade: I love my Rebel XT but with 8MP, it is difficult to make large prints like the ones mentioned by Ross." The reason one can make large prints like the ones mentioned by Ross with the 5D MkII is that the files are large. You can't have it both ways, i.e. small files and large prints (well you can but the prints won't be any good). As others have said (not just here but in many places) Ken Rockwell comes up with some very strange ideas to put it kindly. His idea that small files produce sharper photographs is one of the stranger ones.</p>

 

[c_s16]

<p>Thanks everyone for your input, you guys make some great points. I think I will just invest a little more in storage as opposed to lose details due to smaller files. As for whether or not TO upgrade, I will have some more thinking to do (possible thread coming later).</p>

[KenPapai]

<p>And I hope you do LISTEN TO US in this forum and please ignore the Rockwell trolls. It's NOT worth mentioning here.</p>

<p>You're welcome!</p>

[thierry nguyen cuu - nomad]

<p>Wow,<br>

Quantity primes here.<br>

How about making sure that you have the right shot from the landscape in one go and in big RAW ?<br>

You'll find out that shooting 20 millions photos because storage is cheap is a NO-NO way of thinking.<br>

Just imagine to spend about 30 seconds per image per assignment when you come back with 5 000 images from ONE shoot.</p>

<p>I do weddings and YES I switch to medium RAW for receptions and some detailed shots.<br>

And yeah, my most popular albums are 15x15 (opened at 30x15) and images look good on full double spreads.<br>

Pixel peeping is just non sens for me.</p>

[ricardo222]

<p>C.S., take my word for what it's worth and upgrade to the 5D Mk2. Not only is the detail fantastic, but the colour and tonal gradation are stunning.<br>

Don't be too hard on poor Ken...too many late nights looking after his kids I think. He did say, if my memory serves me well, that the 5DMk2 is the best camera around for landscape photography. Having said that you'd wonder why he would then want to degrade it....?<br>

I use my Mk2 a lot for macro photography and the results are wonderful. Never be afraid of "too much" detail...there's no such thing! Follow the advice above about weeding out the not-needed shots (I wish I could) and avoid pixel peeping. Instead, learn the 'craft' of photography...all the best gear in the world is useless unless you get the focus right and the exposure right. If that sounds like a contradiction to my first statement it isn't...good tools are better than inferior ones.<br>

Remember the old adage..."Art happens where craft and vision meet".</p>