CF or SD Jpeg or RAW

P

Paul Parker

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Hi everyone,
I'm sure this has been discussed before in this forum but if i explained my set up would you change anything?

I have a Canon1D mk3 WITH Lexar CF and SD 150MB/160MB CARD SPEEDS. I mainly photograph sport and i believe my cards are from reputable sources and not fake. I normally use the CF card for RAW files and SD for jpegs.

occasionally i find my buffer is reached and then of course frame rate drops (annoyingly). Is this me with too heavy a finger of mine or is one card slot better than the other for handling different files.

I know there is always a JEG vs RAW debate but i do prefer RAW as a backup to save the day with my mess ups at the time with exposure?

Any tweeks i could alter to improve my line of work here?

Many Thanks
PP
 
I may have misunderstood your question, but I believe that if you have two cards in the slots then the write speed is that of the slowest card. So if you have a fast CF but a slow(er) SD then the CF will still only write at the speed of the SD. At least that's what happened on my 5D3.
 
Thanks @mickledore I too noticed that in my 5D3 and believe that was quite a common complaint too with the camera? Im assuming JPEG will always write into the camera faster? @macvisual
 
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Yes. JPEG will write faster but I'd agree with Pete and ask why you need RAW for sports? I think most of the pros on here would only shoot JPEG. I seem to recall Kippax saying that he never shot RAW.
 
IIRC, Tony (@KIPAX) shoots JPEG for speed since he relies on getting his shots onto editors' desks as fast as possible. If the OP is an amateur, there's no harm in shooting raw as well as JPEG to allow him to do more playing with the results than JPEGs allow (if he wants/needs to!) The only sport I shoot is motorsport and that usually allows me to set up once as far as settings go then shoot using those settings until I move or the light changes drastically and I also tend to keep an eye open for particularly spectacular drivers/cars and catch them a minute or 2 later or on their next run up the hill when a burst of 3-5 shots will normally capture the action while panning.
Pretty sure the slow card governing the overall write speed isn't just a Canon "feature" but I always use a matched pair in my D750 so they should be the same anyway! Besides, I shoot JPEGs so the files should (in theory!) write to both cards at the same speed, although the larger raw files would take longer to write than JPEGs so I would send them to the CF card in a dual format situation since IIRC CF cards can be written to faster than comparable speed SD cards.
 
I shoot pro football for newspapers and shoot RAW - in fact I've not seen a pro shoot jpeg in several years at a match. Can't remember hitting the buffer on a 1dx but must have done at some point as I've got 72 shots of a goal celebration from last season
 
mickledore said:
Yes. JPEG will write faster but I'd agree with Pete and ask why you need RAW for sports? I think most of the pros on here would only shoot JPEG. I seem to recall Kippax saying that he never shot RAW.
Click to expand...

The benefits of shooting sports in raw format (technically speaking) are the same as shooting any subject.

I shoot my F1 stuff in raw as it offers better results, but then I don't have to email them within minutes of taking them, I can take my time processing at my leisure :)
 
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