Photography Thailand Forum

[Marc Schultz]

As part of the release of the Canon 1D MKIII, Canon has developed a new sRAW file format for which they claim will reduce RAW file sizes by 50%. Just like Canon to continue to be on the cutting edge of new digital camera technology, eh? The quote from Canon is as follows:

“Major advances have also been made in recording, storage, and playback. For example, in addition to the RAW and JPEG options found in previous EOS Digital SLRs, the EOS-1D Mark III Digital SLR now offers the "sRAW"recording format. "sRAW"has all the flexibility of standard RAW data recording, but at one quarter the resolution and approximately half the file size of conventional RAW images.”

I am not sure exactly what is meant by "at one quarter the resolution" and if that is a good thing or not, but when I read about the halving of the size of RAW files I was excited. The thought of reducing RAW file sizes by 50% is really great, but then I also remembered I have plenty of memory cards now, and 4GB cards are really inexpensive now as well, so it really won't make much difference to me out in the field if the RAW files get any smaller or not.

The thing that really eats up storage in my world is the processed RAW files which are a minimum of 45MB each from the 1DS MKII and not so much the RAW files themselves. Sure, it will be great when RAW files become 50% smaller, but I would still have storage problems after a year's worth of RAW file shooting and processed images anyway given the volume of pictures I take in a year.

At the end of the day, it is really hard drive storage that is the never ending problem for most working professionals. The good news though is that I can now buy a 320GB hard drive for less than US$100, which means I can easily buy 2 hard drives at the end of every year (1 for originals and 1 for a backup of the files) and move an entire year's work off of my system for safe keeping. So that's a good thing.

Speaking of Canon by the way, 2 of my studio images are being used on the Canon Europe web site. See if you can recognize them:

http://www.canon-europe.com/For_Home/Product_Finder/Cameras/Digital_SLR/index.asp

[geoff]

Hi Marc,

Haven't had much time to contribute to the forum lately, but hope to get back here more often.  It will be interesting to follow the development of sRAW.  Technology seems to be constantly evolving.  By the way, I guess your images on the Canon website are the beautiful model and the mangosteen.

Geoff

[Marc Schultz]

Nice to see you back Geoff. Good one on the Canon website. You are spot-on on those 2 pictures!

[bjorn slis]

Marc: What is meant by a quarter of the resolution is exactly that, this new file format sRAW is a 2,5 mp raw file, I think it's meant to eventually replace JPEG files, not something to use a lot I'm afraid. Good that c'non uses your work.

[Pirostitch]

Congrats Marc on having the two photos on the Canon site.

Interesting to hear about sRaw.  I know on the Nikon side there is the ability to do compressed Raw on the D2Xs which halves the file size by 50% and there's hardly any difference in resolution.  Would be cool if they did sRaw with a firmware update to the 5D as well but who knows?  Might only be possible with the 1D series.

[bjorn slis]

@Pirostitch
- Canon's normal RAW files get 50% smaller (that's not sRAW)
- in the new sRAW format the resolution does get a lot smaller, so there you will end up with a 2.5 MP file, but with the advantages of raw

[Marc Schultz]

If my understanding is correct, the sRAW file format on the new MKIII is actually a RAW file, but with reduced resolution. In the past it was only possible to record a RAW file at the camera's full resolution. So for example, if you have a 10MP camera, in the past you could only capture a RAW file at the full 10MP resolution, even if you only wanted only say at 6MP. So sRAW will allow you to capture RAW files at less than the camera's full resolution. The benefit is that sometimes you may want less pixels because you know that you will only be using the pictures for web use or small sized prints and you want to conserve on storage space. So instead of shooting in a lower-res mode of JPG you can still shoot in RAW so that you maintain all the flexibility of being able to adjust white balance and exposure during post processing, which you can't do with JPG, but while economizing on file size. For me, I probably wouldn't use it very much or hardly at all, but say for a sports shooter who wants to shoot at a high frame rate, and will ultimately only use a small image in a newspaper or magazine, it might come in handy.

[bjorn slis]

exactly

[Pirostitch]

thanks for clearing that up :)

[gregoire]

congratulations, Marc! (for the images on the canon website!)

[Marc Schultz]

Thanks for the congrats from everyone. In case anyone might have seen a copy, I also had a couple of pictures in the Canon Europe 2006/2007 general camera products catalog showing as examples of photos taken with the 1DS Mark II. Although I am in favor of their cameras and lenses, please note that I am not sponsored by Canon or officially endorsing any of their products.

[David Salmanowitz]

Marc--Kudos on the photos on the Canon website. Geoff beat me to it, but I would have picked those two as yours as well. I think I remember the woman from a previous posting, and mangosteens are as Thai as apple pie--or whatever the Thai equivalent of that classic American phrase would be.