New small RAW format (sRAW)

I apologize if this has been addressed before, but I was wondering what you thought about the new small RAW format, sRAW,approx. 2.5MB 1,936 x 1,288, introduced in the new 1D MK III.

I initially thought it wouldn't be of much use, but if you are shooting assignments that don't require sizable enlargements it would certainly give you the ability to take a great deal more images and still have the flexibility that the RAW format provides.

What are your thoughts on its application and value?

Pinto wrote in post #3185012
I was wondering what you thought about the new small RAW format, sRAW,approx. 2.5MB 1,936 x 1,288, introduced in the new 1D MK III.

It's not something for which I have any real use. That having been said, if Canon chooses to include it in the 1D MkIII, so be it. It's not like I'll ever have to use it, so in effect it's like all sorts of the other features and functions manufacturers cram into cameras these days.

So long as even the most useless feature can be disabled and ignored, I'm okay with it. I mean, there are programmed exposure modes (sometimes dismissed as "Idiot Modes") on my camera that I've never used, but it's not like they get in my way, either. Similarly, I don't know that I've ever used my DSLR in JPEG/SMALL mode. But hey, the existence of that option doesn't hurt me in any way.

Yeah, yeah, each feature costs money to include. But by including it camera sales are presumably increased, thus resulting in savings due to economy of scale which likely more than offset the dollar or two per camera the feature costs.

There might be more validity to this line of thought, were CF card prices extremely high. But with 8GB Sandisk Extreme III cards going for $60 each, and the 16GB cards for less than twice that, I really don't see how being able to fit more images onto a card is all that urgent a need. Surely anyone who can afford a 1D MkIII could easily afford ample compact flash memory capacity.

12345Michael54321 wrote in post #3185151
There might be more validity to this line of thought, were CF card prices extremely high. But with 8GB Sandisk Extreme III cards going for $60 each, and the 16GB cards for less than twice that, I really don't see how being able to fit more images onto a card is all that urgent a need. Surely anyone who can afford a 1D MkIII could easily afford ample compact flash memory capacity.

Much faster write speed and three times as many images before your buffer fills might change your mind in the right situation.

I have yet to shoot anything that might require the extra space but still need the flexibility of RAW. That doesn't mean though that it doesn't have its uses. It would kinda suck though if you got that once in a lifetime shot at 1/4 of the resolution of your camera though.

Pinto wrote in post #3185270
Much faster write speed and three times as many images before your buffer fills might change your mind in the right situation.

While one can certainly imagine situations where this might be important, in the real world the 1D MkIII's already rather peppy write speed and fairly roomy buffer would seem to render these small-RAW advantages pretty minor for the vast majority of people, in the overwhelming majority of situations.

I mean, at some point it's fair to say that "while this new feature might have some value to a handful of photographers in a very limited number of situations, mostly it's an unimportant gimmick." Sort of how Canon could have included an electronic Xhosa/English dictionary and a chewing gum storage compartment with combination lock in the 1D MkIII, and a few folks would likely have related how these features greatly enhanced their picture-taking experience, but it'd still be fair to state that for most of us, they'd rarely serve any real purpose.

I'll be interested to hear Canon's official reasoning for its introduction.

I see very little use for most photographers myself, but I guess it doesn't hurt. I was reading about the apple design philosophy yesterday, one important point was that choose what features to leave out is what keeps it simple and helps keep their products in demand.

tim wrote in post #3186660
I see very little use for most photographers myself, but I guess it doesn't hurt. I was reading about the apple design philosophy yesterday, one important point was that choose what features to leave out is what keeps it simple and helps keep their products in demand.

The old K.I.S.S philosophy certainly has its merits.
Unfortunately competitiveness brings out the "you gotta have something new to sell" attitude in manufactures and we end up with bloatware-software and bloated features on all electronics. I think that attitude has about sunk Symantec which is a shame.

tim wrote in post #3186660
choose what features to leave out is what keeps it simple and helps keep their products in demand.

That's certainly one design philosophy.

But then there's the design/marketing philosophy especially common in electronics (and let's not kid ourselves - digital cameras are more electronic goods, than they are anything else), which is to include tons of features and options, because the consumer figures that makes the product better. Moreover, adding a fairly basic firmware feature is pretty simple and inexpensive. I mean, if Canon decides to add a new JPG size to the 40D, call it "semi-large," which would be bigger than medium, but smaller than large, it's not going to cost $5 million in R&D to find a way to accomplish this. If Canon decides that 2-second and 10-second mirror lock-up delay isn't enough, so they add a 4-second and an 7-second setting, that's just not going to require breakthru work in engineering, you know?

What makes this worse, is that whenever a camera is reviewed, the reviewer will tend to pick out one or two features which he wishes the camera offered. So when the camera model is revised or replaced, those wishes (assuming they require only inexpensive changes to firmware) sometimes get added into the new camera. This sort of thing is how some pieces of office productivity software - word processors, being a fine example - got ever more complicated over the course of a decade or so. Every time a reviewer wrote, "I wish it could do...," the next version of the software had that option built in. Sure, it made the word processor more "powerful," but at the cost of complicating the program with features which only a few people cared about, and which made the whole thing that much less intuitive and that much more complicated for the majority of people to use effectively.

I'm no Luddite, who insists that anything which makes a camera more complicated than a Leica M3 only serves to get in the way of the photographic "experience." But sometimes I do wonder whether the pendulum will ever swing back, just a little, such that the "Keep It Simple" design philosophy will account for at least a few mid-priced DSLR models.

It probably won't. But anything's possible.

PS - Hey, Pinto, I didn't realize you touched upon some of these very themes, while I was typing my response.
--
Michael

Apple DSLR anyone? Comes in one color - white - and its only setting is "full auto", yet it takes great pictures every time.

tim wrote in post #3187826
Apple DSLR anyone? Comes in one color - white - and its only setting is "full auto", yet it takes great pictures every time.

...and has trouble doing anything unless you pay £14,000 for the accesories. And wont connect to anything that isnt pearl white...



I feel a thread about PC Vs. Mac coming on...