What is the count in the entire world? Maybe 50 posters

[Contrast]

Not trying put words into your mouth but you are obviously unhappy and have all ready defined that what Sony and Nikon offer is not for you. I suggest that you simply find the best deal on a Canon that suits you and move on.

Long,messy and bitter breakups are best avoided.

LOL. You are probably right.

For the time being lack of cash keeps me with the camera I have..

[Dusty]

One would have to be prepared to be comfortable with huge image files though.
Greg

Okay, let's put that one to rest once and for all.

I'm sitting at my 5yo work PC. It's a P4, not even a real fast one, with a horrible built-in video card. I've been working on a website for a customer and was supplied some hi-res, 24 bit TIFFs from a 5D MkII. They're 5616 x 3744 Pixels (21.03 MPixels) and 60 MB files. IrfanView and FastStone both take about 8 seconds to to load them. Give me a new machine and good video card and I'm sure I can do it in 2. When I output that to a JPEG, it loads in 1 second.

The photographer also supplied us with some up-scaled TIFFs at 7200 x 10800 Pixels (77.76 MPixels). They take 29 seconds to load! Output to JPEG, 3 seconds to load.

We also always get the corollary "Storage is a problem". Let me dig out the 'Gig for a Grand' story.

In 1992 I went to see a friend one evening and he broke out the latest edition of Computer Reseller News. SCSI drives had broken the gigabyte size barrier and were priced around $1300. He exclaimed with glee that "It will soon be a Gig for a Grand". Ever since then, whenever one of us buys a large drive we e-mail the other the cost per gig.

Today at my local MicroCenter, 2 TERABYTE drives can be had for $110. 2 THOUSAND times the space for 10% of what it the old Gig drives cost. 18 cents a gig isn't all that bad.

Dusty

[Greg Beetham]

Dusty if you like handling large files go right ahead, don't let me stop you. I don't like taking my memory out all the time, I prefer to leave it in and download from the camera, mostly, that way you don't run the risk of damaging the pins, also the Sandisk card reader seems to be able to do something to the files, so much so, that Photoshop regards them as a different file as compared to the files downloaded from the camera. The card reader is definitely faster and it saves using the battery in the camera, but because of the file id. changes I rarely use it, why? because if there are files left on the memory card that haven't been deleted yet, you get them downloaded all over again, wasting time and battery power, and having the files duplicated on the hard-disk, and with huge image files that's the last thing I'd want.
If the files a very large, you firstly most likely have a slower camera that uses much more battery power processing the large files because the camera processor needs to be upgraded to process the files in the shortest time possible, this then requires a battery grip, and or, larger heavier batteries.
The camera memory can store far fewer individual photos than it could before, so you need to carry double or tripple the amount of memory cards, just to be safe, if you like to take just as many photos as you did before with the much smaller file camera that is.
I am also not convinced that there is much, if any, benifit in having huge files, unless you do photos for a billboard company that is, I have yet too see a normal sized print that benefits from huge image files. So in other words, giant image files are largely a waste of space.
Greg
ps. When are we going to see a photo of one of those giant catfish you catch? You might actually need an A9 for a fish that huge.

[tom power 53]

Wonders never cease. People still arguing how much better a 7 year old Minolta 6 MP camera is than the latest tech Sony A580.

How can you even begin that conversation? The sky sure is green today - no it is blue - no it is green - no it is really blue - no it is really really green no it is really really really blue - look here at the color chart it's blue. Well I don't like that color chart and the sky looks really really really really green to me and I don't care about color charts - etc. etc. etc.

[Greg Beetham]

Wonders never cease. People still arguing how much better a 7 year old Minolta 6 MP camera is than the latest tech Sony A580.

How can you even begin that conversation? The sky sure is green today - no it is blue - no it is green - no it is really blue - no it is really really green no it is really really really blue - look here at the color chart it's blue. Well I don't like that color chart and the sky looks really really really really green to me and I don't care about color charts - etc. etc. etc.

I wasn't sure if you're refering too me with that, in any case I read through what I wrote again just to see if there was any reference whatsoever too a 7 year old Minolta 6 MP camera and green sky and came up empty handed, so I'm not sure what you're referring to.
I can see some point to large files if they've discovered a new method of noise binning and use the large file for that purpose, but large MP sensors are potentially noisy so I don't see the point of making the noise in the first place.
Large MP sensors also most likely generate far more hot pixels as well so they need to be dark framed and hot pixel mapped more often thus wasting more battery power.
Greg

[Dr. Harout]

I just remembered, those cRAW files are gone and do not exist in the newer models...

[David Kilpatrick]

The .ARW2 format (newer models, though it is still just .ARW) is probably a version of cRAW not uncompressed raw. The original A100 raws and the earlier Minolta .MRW raws all used a form of lossless (or nearly losslee) compression and I think what was unusual about the A700/A900 was the choice of cRAW (the normal format, really) and a completely uncompressed raw.

Maybe someone like agorabasta with more knowledge of the details of raw formats can confirm whether the current everyday .ARW found in all the newer cameras is actually a compressed raw.

David

[alphaomega]

Reference David Kilpatrick's comments above re RAW v. cRAW. I have been wondering about this as well. Just looked at RAW sample pictures and found:
A700 RAW 18.36 Mb
A350 RAW 15.32 Mb
A550 RAW 14.34 Mb
Never used cRAW so would not know size for A700. There must be some compression on the newer camera RAW format. My recollection is that the rule of thumb was Mp x 1.5 for RAW and x 3 for TIFF. That would be right for A700 but not the other two for RAW but still near enough for TIFF.

[Winston]

I don't believe the KM-7D RAW files are compressed. At least mine are not.

[David Kilpatrick]

I can't remember whether the RRRRRGGGGGGBBBBBB runlength compression format was MRW or A100 ARW originally. It is similar to LZW. If your raw files vary in size at all, they are compressed.

David

[Winston]

MRW files vary in size a little because the internal jpeg varies.

[David Kilpatrick]

Yes, they are nearly all around 8.7MB and clearly uncompressed. That came in with Sony.

David

[agorabasta]

The a700 craw was not quite lossless; if the two elements in a string differed more than allowed (about 8-bit value), it smoothed the transitions. It could be seen shooting a display screen at its image pixel freq rate close to the density of the sensor sensels, especially if the screen was displaying pure green. It could affect certain real-world images as well.

IIRC, the a100 compressed format was totally lossless.
And now I still can't see any trace of compression losses in the newer cams like a5x0 and Nex.
But compression surely is there, since 14Mp times 12bit equals 21MB of pure raw data.

[Dr. Harout]

Here we go again...
So in which format to shoot?