Well, first of all, they're not raw. Canon just calls it that for marketing purposes. Technically, they are in JPEG file format, but they are more similar to a TIFF. They have some JPEG compression -- that is, half the color information is thrown away (this is *after* throwing away a lot of the resolution by the in-camera demosaic and downsample). But it's pretty light compression and most of the time will go completely unnoticed.Originally Posted by EricPvpi
The pros are obvious: smaller files, more shots per card, less backup space required, faster processing, etc. Some pros that you might expect, but do not always get, are things like longer high-FPS shooting streaks before hitting the buffer limit. (It doesn't always work out, because the camera is still doing all the normal processing.)
The cons are more nuanced. Many photographers have what I consider to be a poor perception of the value of resolution. I wrote more about it here a long time ago, but I can't find the thread. Here is a thread from a different forum:
http://photography-on-the.net/forum/...d.php?t=747749
In addition to the loss of resolution, there is the loss of the ability to demosaic the file. Raw converters have untold manhours poured into their demosaic algorithms for optimizing resolution, color, noise, etc. There is a wide variety of them and they get better every year. You can go back to raw files you took 5 years ago and extract more detail, better color, etc. But not if you used sRAW or mRAW. The demosaic and downsample has already been applied, so the only thing the raw converter can do is the same things you can do to a TIFF file: play with the colors, etc. Maybe you're happy with the in-camera demosaic now, but what if your taste has changed in a few years?
Yes.
Yes and no. Only you can decide if the hassle of increased file sizes is worth it, but I would argue that in your case it is. But what's *really* frustrating about all this is that you shouldn't *have* to decide. Canon certainly could use much more intelligent and less harmful compression that truly is raw, but they don't. (Partly it's our fault, since most of us photographers think all compression is evil, even though we readily use things that are much more harmful than compression.)
I discussed some of the superior alternatives to sRAW/mRAW here:
http://photography-on-the.net/forum/...d.php?t=730030
Consider yourself lucky. My D800 raws average ~45MP.
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