Crop vs. File Size vs. Quality

[monkeyleader]

Hey,

I made the decision a few weeks ago to stop shooting at full RAW (on both the 40D and 7D) ... now after reading (and getting throughly confused) about pixels/resolution I'm concerned I'm giving myself a problem when quite often (sports photography) I'll be performing some kind of crop on the image.

If (again in the event of sports photography) I plan to crop 95% of the time to fill the frame should I make sure the original shot has been taken at full size (that the camera can take)

What am I loosing out when it comes to quality here if I choose to shoot at RAW(s) or RAW(m)

cheers,

Nige

PS: two lens are used (Canon 400mm f/5.6 and Canon 70-200mm f/2.8)

 

[seriousrikk]

I've never shot at the S or M raw sized - what benefits does shooting at those sizes offer over shooting at full resolution?

I know when you use those sizes the output will be lower resolution - so if you are cropping you will have less pixels to play with (and less pixels to record the detail)

 

[Donki]

If your definitely planing on cropping shot as large as you can. By shotting at full RAW it is giving you the highest resolution possible meaning more pixels to play with and a greater ability to crop.

 

[HoppyUK]

Those smaller file size options are mainly to enable faster file transfer, and increase memory capacity. But unless you're sending stuff by wire or something, since big memory is so cheap these days and home PCs so fast, I really don't see the point of them. You're just throwing away data.

Cropping is best avoided except as a last resort. Not only does that throw away digital data, it bins lens image detail in big chunks with it. Cropping is death to image quality.

Every square mm of sensor area is very precious, and you should try to fill it with a longer lens as much as possible.

 

[Moore Photos]

Size does matter I would certainly advise shooting in RAW and then converting. What is the point of buying an expensive camera and then not using everything it can give you. Memory is pretty cheap nowadays.