RAW STOREAGE

[paw400d]

Hi there. Could any body settle this lunch time discussion..does downloading
raw images take up more memory on your hard drive than jpeg?The person I was talking to will not use RAW because he feels it takes up to much space on his computer.
Thanks for your help.paw

 

[chilliz]

Yep, much more, it`s around 3 times as much per image on mine.

 

[chilliz]

I should add that RAW is better as you get more info with a RAW file, but some processing is required.

 

[grumpybadger]

Yep, he's right. But a £50 320Gb disc will hold about 20,000 images (depending on camera) so it's hardly going to break the bank

 

[Steep]

Shoot raw if you can and convert to jpg only when you have to for web use etc. RAW is like a film negative that you can adjust to get the best print. As grumpybadger says storage is very cheap and too easily available to be stingy with it.

 

[Harvey_nikon]

Yep, he's right. But a £50 320Gb disc will hold about 20,000 images (depending on camera) so it's hardly going to break the bank

£50 will get you a terrabyte harddrive now, I saw some advertised the other week for £30 :O

 

[neil_g]

cheap isnt always good, spend your money wisely (not on maxtor lol)

 

[blue max]

jpg is a lossy compression method. Raw is not.

Lossy refers to the was blocks of colour are grouped together. For example 600 pixels of pure white could be written 'white x 600', which is obviously much less that describing each and every pixel. However, with jpg if there were a couple of pixels that were 1% colour, they may be ignored and clumped with the white pixels. The higher the compression, the larger the tolerance. Once compressed in this way, you have lost any reference to the pixels you have ignored.

The raw file is considered the 'negative'.

Graham

 

[cokebottles]

RAW = much bigger than Jpeg. There is no "fixed" ratio of how many times bigger though. A RAW file will always be the same size coming from a certain camera = it is a 'raw' dump of the CCD/CMOS data into a file, this is fixed. The size of the jpg file will depend on in camera settings for compression etc, and the content of the picture.

 

[chrisuk]

cheap isnt always good, spend your money wisely (not on maxtor lol)

wise words!!

maxtor :nono: :thumbsdown:

Seagate/WD/Samsung

 

[Craikeybaby]

Or use DNG, not quite as big as RAW files, but it is still a RAW format, will all of the associated benefits!

 

[redhed17]

Or use DNG, not quite as big as RAW files, but it is still a RAW format, will all of the associated benefits!

Aren't DNG files bigger than a native RAW files straight out of the camera, at least with some manufacturers files?

I've just read that DNG uses lossless data compression when converting, but some Nikon files at least are already compressed.

 

[Craikeybaby]

I was under the impression that DNGs were smaller, that is certainly my experience on a Canon system, can't say about Nikon.