Canon 60D - Full-on RAW or Medium RAW?

Hi folks,

Just wondering what size you guys have set on your camera for shooting your RAW images?


I cannot make up my mind whether i'm best just having the medium setting or go forthe full-on RAW setting.


I'm guessing that the full-on would give me a bit more detail to play with but I tend to view my images on a pc and if I ever did make a print, it would only be A4 at largest.


So, what i'm trying to ask is, am I going to benefit from going above the RAW M in 10.1 mp or not?


Thanks very much

When I do use RAW, I always use the full size. The reason for using RAW is that I want all the quality and possibilities my camera can give me.

If my intention is showing images in my webalbum only, where they are uploaded in 2 Megapixel resolution, I normally use 18 Megapixel jpeg. I can crop quite good, but they don't take up that much space and I can shoot well over 100 images in a sequence at full frame rate, without my buffer overfilling. Only if I know white balance will be tricky do I resort to RAW in such cases. Otherwise, noone can tell the difference.

I always use full RAW...

Well.. It's not necessary to always use full raw. It depends on what the intended use for the image is. If I know I am never going to be printing the image larger than say an 8x12, then m/s raw will do just fine. If them image is for facebook, emails, flickr and such, even smaller would be fine but unfortunately, there are no social media settings.

Do keep in mind though that once captured, you'll never be able to get the additional data back. A mraw image will be a mraw image forever so there is no changing your mind. That's why so many will say just shoot at what the camera is capable of delivering and trim the size in jpeg. Storage is really cheap these days.

i use M raw when shooting everyday stuff. events and weddings, full raw.

Cheers folks - your advice is much appreciated

Full raw every time, unless I'm making a timelapse. Then I know that the final image is only going to be 1920x1080 pixels.

Full RAW. You can always down size when you process the images and have more room for cropping

I always shoot full RAW; it's much easier to downsize than to upsize.

I never shoot raw in other than full size. there is very little reason to. Storage is cheap, and as JJ pointed out, if you shoot an image with less than full detail, you can't increase it later. I just leave my camera set for full raw and never think about it.

I always shoot full raw as the larger image gives better options for cropping

Full raw.

Full!

Full, you can never, ever, get the data back from the others, and some RAW converters don't support or don't do as good of a job with the other sizes. Just think, if you happen to take a once in a lifetime shot, and you had it set on another size...you could never make it full.

For aviation, landscape and arty stuff it's full RAW - for family it's jpeg

Al