Do you shoot RAW or jpg with your M9?

[Vickko]

Do you shoot RAW or jpg with your M9?

I'm thinking of switching over to jpg for "happy snaps" - the 35 meg files don't really appeal to me, in terms of disk space usage.

...Vick

 

[PaulW128]

Vick;

I'm very interested to read the responses to your question. I do not shoot with an M9 but i'm facing the same thing with my D7000.

I never realized that the M9 could produce 35meg files!!! And I was complaining about 15meg ones!!

Best
Paul

 

[swoop]

Vick;

I'm very interested to read the responses to your question. I do not shoot with an M9 but i'm facing the same thing with my D7000.

I never realized that the M9 could produce 35meg files!!! And I was complaining about 15meg ones!!

Best
Paul

oh yeah. M9 has two bit rate settings. One is ok at about 15MB a photo. The other is obscene. I have a 5D mk2 also and the RAW's are about 25MB a piece it's getting out of control.

I shoot RAW when working. For sports I shoot JPG with the 5D. There are just so many photos and they're all the same, there's no point in shooting RAW for the extra control. Also when I'm just out and about I bring the M9 and I shoot JPG. It's also a lot easier to deal with as I have an Eye-Fi card and just send the pics to my phone to share them.

JPG's are quick and easy but you can't do too much editing with them. And the only thing I strongly dislike about JPG's is that they are noticeably softer than RAW images. Which sucks but most of the time it's still decent.

 

[gdmcclintock]

I always shoot only RAW with the M9 and RAW with small JPGs when shooting with the Canon 5D MkII.

 

[Sonnar Brian]

Lightroom 3 makes batch conversion of Raw into JPEG so easy, been shooting RAW on the M9 and M8 since getting it.

 

[luuca]

I have shoot 5.000 photos since I have the M9 and I still haven't tried the jpeg 😀

 

[Renzsu]

raw + 1 mp b/w jpg. I wish it was possible to shoot the dng's with the same b/w conversion settings applied to them somehow 🙂 For now I'll have to replicate them myself.

 

[Phil_F_NM]

I shoot only raw with M9 and M8. I treat them as negatives and back them up between 5 separate drives (one is a 4TB RAID-5).
I used to shoot raw + jpg but found that I really wanted the control of the raw file in post so now I save a tiny bit more space. The write times are also a bit better with raw over raw + jpg.
I haven't shot too much with the dng set to uncompressed but now that I have that 4TB array, I think I may try it. I just don't know if I'll see that much more quality in the image. Guess I'll have to start printing really big...

Phil Forrest

 

[seakayaker1]

. . . . . DNG files . . . . . have converted raw files into other formats with Aperture and Adobe.

 

[250swb]

It never even crossed my mind to shoot JPEG with my M9. Why would anybody do that?

The world is moving on and software and computers are developing fast. The M9 has a small brain to process its JPEG files, while Photoshop has the vast brain of your PC to process DNG files. It seems obvious to shoot uncompressed DNG's, who knows what tomorrows software can do with a larger unadulterated file compared to a neutered compressed file. Its happened with software sharpening and noise reduction to the extent that you can now gain far more from a five year old RAW file than you could then. You may not see a vast difference between compressed DNG or a good JPEG today, but if you shoot uncompressed DNG you may well see a difference tomorrow.

And storage continues to get bigger and cheaper so there can hardly be an excuse that disk space is at a premium, just buy external hard drives and do proper backups, leapfrogging your drives so you always have a duplicate copy on another drive.

Steve

 

[Olsen]

The camera computer of M9 is a drag. I shoot DNG all the time. Whish I could shoot raw and jpg at the same time. As I do with my 1Ds III. But the M9's capacity to handle large files is not there. The camera locks up and all kinds of strange things happen.

But storing the files is not a problem. I handle all my files with a PC with a 250mb capacity. It is too small, but I have two aux. 1,5TB hard disks onto which I keep two seperate files of all keeper-files. Then that problem is solved.

 

[jordan.dickinson]

Only RAW! I find it much better than the JPEG files of the M9, and the adjustments available with RAW are indispensable.

 

[jamato8]

RAW. I am not going to spend 7 thousand for a camera and a like amount for lenses and then shoot jpeg and loose some of the data I am trying for in the first place. I shoot RAW with my other cameras as well. As noted above, it is easy to convert but I go to TIFF and then jpeg and keep the TIFF as I do publishing. I also keep the DATA on two separate hard drives. What to do when the hard drives don't work so fine. Digital is great but it has some major drawbacks with regards to long term storage. I still have chromes from the late 1960's that are fine.

 

[fates]

Yeah, RAW all the way. If the shot is a keeper (and a lot of them are), I want full control over the image and max print capabilities. Even just for fun stuff I shoot is at full rez. A 2 or 3 TB drive is cheap these days. What does that hold 50,000+ images at full rez? Get two for back up. Not having the post processing leeway of raw data is crazy in my mind for any pro camera.

 

[kbg32]

Raw, Raw, Raw.

 

[Ben Z]

I shoot at the smaller, compressed DNG setting. The files are about the same size as the M8 DNG files. I've spoken to about a dozen professionals so far who shoot the M9 regularly and none said they have ever been able to detect any degradation comparing the compressed and uncompressed DNG.

 

[barnwulf]

I always shoot RAW (DNG & jpg) with my M8.2. I did the same with my D300 and D700 Nikons. There is just so much more on the file that allows a lot of adjustments. I convert DNGs to Tiffs in Lightroom. I only shoot black and white with my M8.2. It does a nice job. Jim

 

[sevres_babylone]

I shoot raw+jpegs. I do shoot compressed DNG in that combination. A friend, who is a professional photographer, recommended uncompressed, and says he does see better tonal gradation in the highlights. Since a lot of my shooting is of bands in dimly lit environments where I often let the highlights blow out anyway, I haven't switched back.

 

[jaapv]

The camera computer of M9 is a drag. I shoot DNG all the time. Whish I could shoot raw and jpg at the same time. As I do with my 1Ds III. But the M9's capacity to handle large files is not there. The camera locks up and all kinds of strange things happen.

But storing the files is not a problem. I handle all my files with a PC with a 250mb capacity. It is too small, but I have two aux. 1,5TB hard disks onto which I keep two seperate files of all keeper-files. Then that problem is solved.

Umm..try setting the camera to "DNG+JPG fine" 🙄

 

[menos]

Compressed DNG only - acceptable (but not great, compared to the slim 10MB files of the M8).