When recently researching the Canon 40D, I ran into “sRAW” for the first time. It seemed pretty obvious what this new (to me) file format is: a smaller RAW file captured by the same camera. What I didn’t know were the exact specs of the sRAW format. More important, I simply could not fathom who would ever want to use a smaller RAW file in a given camera. Would you?
On October 25, 2007, Chris Ridley of 11thStudio Photography posted this on his blog:
“sRaw is quite simply is a small version of a standard RAW file, roughly ¼ the size. This sRaw file format is ideal for when you know you won’t need to print any thing bigger than approx 6″ x 4″. This could be a great file format for some—if space is at a premium or if you definitely know you won’t be needing to print a bigger size in the future.”
I don’t know how Ridley figured the ¼ size, as Canon lists the storage size of a “normal” Canon 40D CS2 RAW at approximately 12.4MB, while a CS2 sRAW is listed at approximately 7.1MB.
Still, I get the concept and understand why some people might think the sRAW is a great image format: smaller size, same postproduction advantages. What I don’t understand is for whom this advantage would outweigh the disadvantage of trashing immense quantities of RAW data. What if you take a killer shot and 4” x 6” (or whatever) just won’t cut it?
I checked out some old postings about sRAW on photo.net and ran into a like-minded photographer named Weiyang Liu. About the sRAW he wrote: “I don’t see a point in it from personal perspective. I mean, sure it take up less space and still carries all the post process capabilities of full sized RAW’s, but I just don’t see where I can put it to good use.”
I second that.
Jason Hall seems to think the sRAW format is grand: “I want it because I like the flexibility of RAW with white balance and the like but I don’t need large images. Such as I had two shoots this past weekend. One was for a personal trainer wanting photos for her web site and later that day I shot a 6 month old for her parents.”
I get Hall’s point, but not the logic. Every day photographers are capturing scores of unwanted images (misfires, bad exposures, out of focus, boring, etc., etc., etc.) that they will never print, let alone print at a whopping 4”x6.” And many are doing so with cameras that record much more data than the 40D’s full estimated RAW size of 12.4MB. So what if they capture gobs of digital junk?
Isn’t the point to capture as much raw data as possible, then figure out the editing and storage issues later?
Why would anyone willingly chuck out so much precious RAW data? Maybe I’m missing something here. Any thoughts?
October 18th, 2009 3:55 pm
I think I may have meant to write 1/4 LESS in size, rather than a 1/4 OF the size.
Regurgitating researched stats at the time!
Thanks,
Chris