Resolution?

[FZ1]

What resolution do most shoot weddings at - the best available? The sRAW1 on the 50D's are 7.1 MP which would save a lot of CF card space. I'm guessing the downside is reduced room for cropping and still having an image large enough to print 8x10. I'll be shooting a wedding but basically handing over the files as is (I'll remove all the obvious goofs) and I have no idea what the B&G are planning to do with them (i.e. photo album, collages, etc).

[wdwpsu]

I always shoot everything in RAW at the highest resolution. SRAW1 downsizes quality. It's someone's wedding, you may be capturing the greatest photo of the greatest moment of their life. It's not the time to cut costs.
The only time I do cut costs, is I'll sometimes shoot JPEG for sports just so I can get a higher FPS.
Do your client a favor and pick up another CF card.

[FZ1]

Thanks, I have 2 4GB 233x cards. My son is going to be my assistant (lens bitch :P) and I'm going to bring my laptop and card reader so I can move pics off the card(s) between the wedding and reception.

[elysium]

If you have time, do consider picking up another card. The concept of running two cards is fine but there will be times where one card will not empty fast enough or you might not be able to hand a card over to your son who can rush off and dump the card.

One tip. Do NOT delete any photos via chimping until you get home. Two reasons - 1. You dont want to miss even a split second. 2. There maybe a way to salvage even the goofs into something worth keeping.

As for res already mentioned, highest res in the event the client (for some odd reason) may want something mahoosive for future use.

[neil_r]

cards are now as cheap as chips, get more and be safe.

[FZ1]

Thanks for the replies guys! I'll pick up 8GB card today...it's not like it will go unused :)

[Joelene]

If you have time, do consider picking up another card. The concept of running two cards is fine but there will be times where one card will not empty fast enough or you might not be able to hand a card over to your son who can rush off and dump the card.

One tip. Do NOT delete any photos via chimping until you get home. Two reasons - 1. You dont want to miss even a split second. 2. There maybe a way to salvage even the goofs into something worth keeping.

As for res already mentioned, highest res in the event the client (for some odd reason) may want something mahoosive for future use.


What elysium said.

I shoot between Raw and JPG Large all the time. I don't go lower than that. I take a total of 20+ gigs of memory with me. I am not saying I USE that much, but I would rather have it and not need it.

[tim]

Cards are cheap. You never know when you'll want a huge print of a photo.

[sandpiper]

I'm guessing the downside is reduced room for cropping and still having an image large enough to print 8x10.

That's a very big downside. It's not uncommon for an image (which works perfectly well uncropped) to also have another image 'inside it' where a fairly decent crop can pull out a great head & shoulders portrait which is even nicer than the full length shot.

Besides, what if they don't want to crop, but DO want to make a 20x30 print for wall-hanging.

Why cut down your client's options by shooting at lower res? I only ever use max resolution and usually RAW, only switching to max quality jpeg if I really need to shoot a lot of rapid bursts in quick succession. I don't see the point in spending big money on quality cameras and glass then crippling it by shooting at less than it's best. sRAW is fine for journalists needing to download fast for newspaper deadlines (where high res isn't needed anyway usually) but I wouldn't use it unless there was a very definite NEED to.

[FZ1]

Picking up a 8GB Sandisk Extreme III card. FYI - Amazon has them for $47.85 + Shipping. The lowest I could find elsewhere is $58 + shipping.

http://www.amazon.com/SanDisk-Extreme-SDCFX3-008G-A31-Retail-Package/dp/B000FKQ8LA/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1246890817&sr=8-1

[form]

I have a Canon 5D and 40D and for weddings I have 32gb of memory. Your camera's RAW files are larger than mine and 4gb is good for about 200 photos or less for you, I imagine. For security, bare minimum for a full wedding would be about 2,000 photos worth of storage.

[SuzyView]

I went from the 5D to the 5DII and I bought 40GB of memory cards, all 4GB except the one you mentioned above, the 8GB Extreme III from Amazon. I filled my think tank holder and the last ceremony wedding I covered, I used all the cards. I shot in RAW & MJPEG and it was easy to fill the cards and I lost nothing. Good choice to get a bigger card. You don't want to be in a position that you have to worry about space on a card. Weddings, in particular, are once-in-a-lifetime event, as a pro, I have to shoot it with all the tools I can just in case I need to fix something later.

[Billo78]

I shoot sRAW on my recently acquired 5D2 at weddings. I used to use a 30D and 40D, now I still use the 40D but also use the 5D2 at 10mp which is a 2mp improvement on what I was using before.

30mb RAW files and my 2 year old laptop are not happy bedfellows, perhaps once I step up to a MacBook Pro I'll crank it up to full res, but perhaps not. I prefer Nikon's approach to the megapixel race, but that's another story.