Football...Raw or JPEG

[redmonkee]

Tomorrow will be my first opportunity to try out my 7D with 300 f4 at a local football match. I'm really excited as I've been trying to line up a team to shoot for a few weeks now and have finally agreed with a local team that I can shoot at their ground every week

Now I have taken a lot of advice from you guys regarding shutter speed, iso, metering etc etc. So now all I am left with is RAW or JPEG?

I have a about 9 or 10 gig of memory with 4 gig being my largest card, and I am quite surprised at how few raw images I can fit onto this card. obviously JPEG means more images but i think I might need the raw file later if I fail to get exposure bang on.

What would you guys do?

Cheers

Phil

 

[KIPAX]

dont bother with raw for football.. you will be suprised at how many pictures you take

 

[purpleclouds]

If you don't feel entirely confident on nailing the exposure then it won't harm to shoot RAW for a little while until you are.. this will of course mean that you'll need to be more selective in your shooting - but this is no bad thing!

The football professionals all shoot jpeg for ease and speed of editing

 

[Tyrone Shoelaces]

Raw + wireable sized JPEG around 1.5Mb - 2Mb

 

[Nifkin]

The football professionals all shoot jpeg for ease and speed of editing

And because the average punter looking at a sports pic isn't going to give a monkey's about how well the camera's processor renders colours, etc

 

[EOS_JD]

If you are confident of getting great exposures jpg all the way. If not, the 7D should be fast enough to shoot RAW.

 

[purpleclouds]

And because the average punter looking at a sports pic isn't going to give a monkey's about how well the camera's processor renders colours, etc

Stock pictures which can be used in advertising and other publications do

 

[BKphotography]

When I shoot fitba pix I never considered RAW... the buffer would have croaked it.

It has been a few years now but I never spoke to or knew anyone who shot RAW at a game.

 

[JEmerson]

Provided the 7D buffer could take it- it'd shoot the smallest RAW files and the largest JPEGs. Since, your not working for an agency you don't need the images fast so the large JPEG sizes won't matter (set quality to around 5 - simply to save space on the card). So try to practice using the larger JPEG files and pretending the RAWs aren't there. If you muck it all up you need to change the white balance or exposure use the sRAW files -that way at least you get something.

Then once you get more experience cut out the RAW files altogether.

Once you are confident enough shoot large JPEGs with the quality around 5 in camera. They sould be nice and small and you should get plenty on each card, but you have the resolution to crop and tweak away later on.