mRaw vs. Raw

Regarding the 7D mark ii, has anyone run across any information that Raw images have an identifiable and clear advantage over the 11mp mRaw? I'm contemplating updating my gear from a 10mp 40D, which has served me well. Notice that I wrote updating, not upgrading. I just need a newer camera. My backup is a long in the tooth 20D, which Canon no longer services as I understand. I have some important shoots coming up and don't want to rely on it for a backup. In my photography, I see no dire need for 20mp files. If you are of the "more megapixels is always better" religion, please do not try to convert me. Larger prints or tighter crops don't cut it. I had an 8mp image from my 20D blown up to 3x5 feet and on display in the Long Island Aquarium for years. I'm looking for practical, dare I say, empirical information that justifies Raw over mRaw.

joedlh wrote in post #17479254
Regarding the 7D mark ii, has anyone run across any information that Raw images have an identifiable and clear advantage over the 11mp mRaw? I'm contemplating updating my gear from a 10mp 40D, which has served me well. Notice that I wrote updating, not upgrading. I just need a newer camera. My backup is a long in the tooth 20D, which Canon no longer services as I understand. I have some important shoots coming up and don't want to rely on it for a backup. In my photography, I see no dire need for 20mp files. If you are of the "more megapixels is always better" religion, please do not try to convert me. Larger prints or tighter crops don't cut it. I had an 8mp image from my 20D blown up to 3x5 feet and on display in the Long Island Aquarium for years. I'm looking for practical, dare I say, empirical information that justifies Raw over mRaw.

Im with you. I love my 70D but I hate the 20mp files. Why?! Seriously! But I do have the option to set it to M or S Raw, which I do sometimes If I am concerned with space.

If you don't see the need, then I guess you don't need it.

I rarely print anything larger than 11X14, but memory is cheap, and I periodically go through my files and cull anyway.

I think that if you are personally OK with going to the smaller format for your own purposes there isn't much of an issue. There isn't really any technical evidence that you are throwing away anything critical other than a part of your data which, if you find you don't need it is fine. I was tempted to go that route myself but after doing some tests I found one compelling reason to stay with the full RAW file. I regularly shoot at high ISO and I found that doing a pass or two of noise reduction and then downsizing the file gave me better NR results and better detail vs starting with the medium file.

How does mRaw affect cropping?

BlakeC wrote in post #17479302
How does mRaw affect cropping?

If you crop heavily, like trying to get the max close-ups in macro, having the most pixels to begin with makes sense.

If you look at photozone.de lens tests, some lenses were tested with 8MPixel cameras, then later retested with 15Mpixel cameras. The LW/PH (line-widths per picture width) figures (the amount of detail resolution captured by the sensor) increases substantially. It shows how much detail and impression of sharpness the viewer gets when looking at both photos. In the case of the 70-200 f/2.8 L IS II, at 135mm resolution increases from 2026 LW/PW to 2480 LW/PW, a 22% improvement due solely to pixel count of sensor.

While you might not make huge enlargements, it could affect how even an 16x24 comes out, if a crop of the frame is used. I have not made an 'upgrade' from my 40D because, like you, I find the pixel count of the existing camera to be sufficient for my current uses, and dislike the idea of doubling my consumption rate of harddrive storage space, in spite of the continuing plummeting costs...it still takes TIME to move bits from one place to another, and doubling the time because of doubled bit count is a consideration -- even when storing each photo is made no more expensive because of declining harddrive costs per Megabyte!

A couple of other things slows any desire to 'upgrade'...

• the use of the electronic overlay display in viewfinders prevents swapping out focusing screens on a number of more recent cameras.
  
• the omission of features like PC cord connector on the body forces issues like

  
  

  • buy and use a new hotshoe-to-PC adaptor or
    
  • pay considerably more for the 5DII and higher bodies!
    

  
  
  ... (what you USED to have to do only with the entry level nnnD cameras, but now have to do even on the nnD and 6D!)
  

That is very interesting indeed. Never considered that.

Doing the downsizing interpolation after you have processed your image, and done any necessary noise reduction will always provide better results than doing the interpolation beforehand. mRAW and sRAW are not really RAW data as they have been interpolated from the full image. For reasons of control I would never have the camera do processing to the file that I could later do myself in a RAW processor that offered more control on and choices in the way the processing is done. This is why I only use full stop ISO values, and shoot ETTR. As others have said these days storage is cheap.

Alan

As evidenced by my 1D3 files, a 10MP file will print VERY large.
But as a wildlife photographer, every pixel can count, and cropping one place where the full res will certainly come in handy.

I can imagine however that for many uses the 11MP 7D2 mRAW file will be fine. For me, I'd always prefer to deal with the full file size.

I can always turn a 20mp raw file into a 720x480 250kB JPG. Going the other way just doesn't work. I'll keep as much information as I can get. 2TB HDD is about $59.

One practical application is for time lapsing. You don't want to shoot thousands of full res photos but need the flexibility of raw during post.

Thanks for everybody's insights and perceptions. When I get the camera, I intend to do any empirical test. If I come up with anything noteworthy, I'll post it.

I went through this loop going from the 20D to 7DI, I did noise and sharpness tests (results are on my webpage if you are interested, no doubt the 7DII behaves similarly).

In the end I just kept the full resolution for every shot, but I mostly shoot wildlife.

If you are using it in a case where you are sure you don't need the extra resolution then I am sure they work fine. But it would be a shame to take the shot of a lifetime but then find you only had sRAW.

For a long time I "tried" to use mRAW for its smaller, more convenient size, and it works alright but with my 7D (mark I) I noticed that somehow my files weren't sharp enough in mRAW (processed with ACR). mRAW should have been at least as sharp or actually sharper than the normal size RAW because of the reduced size.

Obviously, noise is less but it is just a direct consequence of having a reduced size image and not because of any pixel-binning or other trickery in mRAW (as far as I know).

So after many attempts I stopped using mRAW, but it may work for others and in other RAW converters.