For all you RAW shooters....

What RAW-mode do you shoot pictures in? Do you use full, medium, or small RAW? Would I be losing anything if I shoot in medium raw mode to fit more images?

Why not shoot full RAW?

I'd turn the question around on you, what do you gain not shooting in full raw. What you give up is megapixels, but heck you paid for that many might as well have em. Unless you simply dont have enough storage or your computer wont handle the full raw file why not use it?

It depends what I'm shooting.. When shooting in low light at high ISO (1600 or greater) I prefer to shooting in sRaw1.. To me, the images just seem that little bit cleaner..

yogestee wrote in post #11386199
It depends what I'm shooting.. When shooting in low light at high ISO (1600 or greater) I prefer to shooting in sRaw1.. To me, the images just seem that little bit cleaner..

This is what my thinking was. The reduced MP count would help at higher ISOs

I tried the other RAW modes on my 1D4 -- ugh -- something was off with those as opposed to the full RAW. The shots did not respond as well to post processing.

sRaw shouldn't make any more difference then a resize in post, you're not using fewer megapixels or creating larger ones because it's a physical sensor.
It's only an in camera resize that can actuallly lower the bust speed becaue of the extra computing needed.

Full RAW, always.

I use a mix depending at what stage of a wedding I am shooting. For everything else full.

Full RAW when shooting raw.

shedberg wrote in post #11386293
Full RAW, always.

+1 here.

Darkwand wrote in post #11386286
sRaw shouldn't make any more difference then a resize in post, you're not using fewer megapixels or creating larger ones because it's a physical sensor.
It's only an in camera resize that can actuallly lower the bust speed becaue of the extra computing needed.

I'm sorry, I'm not making any sense from this.

sRaw is like shooting Small jpeg -- you get a smaller resolution file, and if that's what you want, it's great.

But, you can't expect any more than that -- I fielded a question a bit ago by someone who couldn't get a decent print from an image -- he had shot in sRAW and then cropped and all of a sudden his image was not printable.

So, shoot in sRaw if and only if you have no wish for a print at good resolution!

i shoot sRaw when im swimming with my camera. reason being is that i can not delete photos that are a waste. as the guy is on the wave i just hold in my trigger. so out of a sequence of 10 photos, only half (if im lucky) will be usable since there is water spray, etc. i need as many photos as i can get. gives me around 999 photos on a 16gig card

I've done test after test with my 7D in all RAW modes and at all ISOs and am VERY HAPPY with any of them (1) as long as I'm not cropping the images!!!

And that's the crux of the matter. Frame properly and all RAW modes kick jpegs into P&S territory (by comparison).

If you think you'll take a LOT of pictures, and you stick with ISO 320, 640, 1250, 2500, 3200 or 6400 (on a 7D), mRAW and sRAW are excellent, comparable to RAW, (2) and take less time to download/process.

Which is my other point. My computer is not fast enough, but other things have taken priority for the moment...

Using m/sRAW allows me to enjoy a better body than my 30D but without stress on the computer.

Keep in mind mRAW on a 7D is 10MP, thats the same as 1D3! So if people can live with a 1D3 (and crop for that matter), then you should be fine with mRAW on a 7D.

With that said, I still take full RAW because I need to crop a lot some times, and I like large resolution.