I said that I wouldn’t do any more pixel peeping, however a friend of mine who’s considering buying the Canon 5D MkII asked me to do a quick test for him, so I thought I’d share the results here.
His concern is that the 5D’s 21 mega pixels would generally be far more than he ever needs, leading to inflated file sizes and slower post processing. His interest is therefore in the SRaw1 format, in which the camera generates 10 mega pixel Raw files via some form of interpolation. He asked me to take an outdoor photo once in each format so that he could examine the Raw files himself. I’m happy to oblige.
First things first – I apologise for the terrible photo. It’s bloody freezing outside so I just found some detail in my garden, took a snapshot and ran back inside.
The photo is taken on a tripod using Canon’s 135mm f/2 and the settings are identical for each shot – 1/60 sec at f/3.2, ISO 100. I manually focused using the great 10x live view feature to ensure critical focus. Here’s the basic shot.
If you’re interested I’ve placed the original Raw and SRaw1 images online so that you can play with them in your preferred post processing software.
Here are two crops of the same area in each format. The 21 mega pixels clearly have more detail, but this is to be expected. Note that I’ve applied a very slight capture sharpening to the images using Lightroom. I thought that my readers would be more interested in what they will end up with rather than crops of the unadulterated Raw which will always be a little soft due to the anti-aliasing filter.
100% crop of full Raw image.
100% crop of smaller SRaw1 image.
I thought that it would be interesting to know if more detail can be extracted by reducing the size of the Raw file in post processing rather than asking the camera to do it. Here’s the same crop from the full Raw image reduced to the size of the SRaw1 image – I think it speaks for itself:
100% crop of full Raw image reduced to the size of the SRaw image by Lightroom 2.
My conclusion is that the 21 mega pixels definitely bring something worthwhile to the table. The SRaw1 format has its uses but post-processing speed shouldn’t be one of them. It’s better to take the image in Raw and then downside to a smaller size as the first step in the process.
I hope this helps some of you.
Tim – I agree. I have the 5D Mk II (and love it). The RAW file is huge, but worth every pixel in my opinion. The sRaw of course has its uses, for example if you know for sure you are going to mono the shot. But, to be honest, I never change down from Raw….the PC power and disk space these days (for me), means I don’t need to at the moment. Great post and good analysis.
Kevin
Tim.
This was a clear and yet simple analysis of the two types of RAW available on the new 5D.
Good work.
Thank you.
Have a Healthy 2009 !
Great review. I was wondering about this too.
Thanks!
Paul
Tim,
Thanks a bunch for the info! I have the 5D MK2 and have been pulling the hair our of my head due to the fact Aperture doesn’t read the SRAW files….just found it – it can’t yet.
Thanks again!
Alec
Hey Guys,
Just wondering if either one of you know a work-around to process RAW files shot in SRAW1…Lightroom and Aperture don’t work and I tried in the Canon SOftware that comes with the camera and that is giving me errors as well.
Thanks!
Lightroom and DPP both read SRaw files as long as you have the latest versions.
Thanks for this test. I’m curious how other wedding photographers are handling the RAW vs. SRAW1 issue. In particular, whether it’s worth the extra pixels when you’re shooting a long day of weddings.
I use SRAW1 for weddings. I don’t need 21 megapixel files nor do I need all that space being taken up…just not practical.
Hi there,
I shot with my new 5D Mark II in sRAW1 format,
I usually edit in Aperture on MacBook Pro.
Aperture 2.1 don’t recognized the format.
I try with Photoshop CS3 installed on my Mac, but I still can’t read this kind of format.
It is someone else with this same issues like me?
What should I do to view and edit this kind of format?
Thanks,
Aurel
Hi Auriel,
As you may know by now, is that the files from the 5D2 can only be read by CS4/ACR5/LR2.4
Aurel,
The same thing happened to me. Aperture does not support sRAW formats. I hope they do very soon but I have not heard anything about it. I had to switch to Lightroom 2 to edit the wedding photos I shot in sRAW format. You can try the software that comes with the camera but I think it will be quite limiting.
It works with lightroom 2.4 , you can download a trial for 30 days
http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/thankyou.jsp?ftpID=4507&fileID=4207
SRaw is working on the next software,
Lightzone 3.9
Adobe DNG
Adobe Photoshop CS5
Adobe Lightroom 3.3
Hi Tim,
great article: thanks!
I have following question: when shooting in sRAW, does it mean we get less noise? after all the sensor is the same, but less pixels will be used.
thank you
Oleg
Thank you Tim! I was on the verge of going from raw to sraw1 but after reading your post decided against it.
Still it always remains the question in what way the pictures you are taking will be used before deciding to always use RAW after reading such articles online;
if I do an assignment that will display clothing on a website/shop on a max resolution of 800×1200 pixels only, with maybe a max zoom function of 150%, I will still use sRAW in order to speed things up and save on harddrive space. In this case I am not interested in 100% crops.
First decide what you shoot for, then decide what sizes to use. In a period of time photographing and post processing you will definately notice you are using time and space to your full advantage.
sRAW advantages are smaller file size (if it is imortant) and smaller noise level so you can use higher ISO in low light situation, disantvantage is less details.