On a 5D Mark III, when shooting mRAW

[Harv]

On a 5D Mark III, when shooting mRAW, does one give up anything other than resolution?

I shoot motocross events most weekends during spring and summer. I have mostly used my 1D Mark IV and have been very happy with results. However, I have had occasion to use my 5D Mark III and notice a higher keeper rate on fast-closing, oncoming shots when compared to the 1D Mark IV. I would like to use the 5D Mark III more but don't like the very large file sizes it produces when dealing with thousands of images. It really does slow down the file transferring and processing.

As I have full access on the motocross tracks and can literally go wherever I want, my images are pretty much frame filling or close to it. I need to do very little cropping, if any. That being the case, shooting mRAW would be more than adequate for my needs in terms of pixels on the target, but leaves me wondering if doing so would cost me more than the just the reduction in resolution.

Can anyone comment on this concern?

 

[neuroanatomist]

One also gives up some color accuracy.

If you're suing something other than DPP, be sure your RAW converter of choice supports mRAW. If you need to use DPP to convert your mRAW to DNG for further processing, you'll end up with bigger files than just shooting regular RAW.

Some technical details on mRAW, color sampling, etc., from Doug Kerr are here.

 

[Harv]

One also gives up some color accuracy.

If you're suing something other than DPP, be sure your RAW converter of choice supports mRAW. If you need to use DPP to convert your mRAW to DNG for further processing, you'll end up with bigger files than just shooting regular RAW.

Some technical details on mRAW, color sampling, etc., from Doug Kerr are here.

Thanks a lot, Neuro. I was hoping you would step up.

I use DPP for my RAW conversions so that will not be a problem. I'll check out the link you've provided.

You are a wealth of knowledge and I appreciate you sharing.

 

[Mt Spokane Photography]

You should probably compare. The camera has to do extra processing to reduce the file size of mraw, so I really don't think you gain anything but space, and lose resolution.

 

[9VIII]

Make sure you have up to date memory cards, when I upgraded to a 60mbps flash card it made a big difference in buffer time.

Also, USB3 empties my 8GB card pretty fast (again, a good modern card), when I bought my 5D2 I made sure to have something that doesn't take 15 minutes to empty the card. USB3 will do it in 2 (or less with better cards).

I did a few simple experiments with mRAW and it looks like downsampling full RAW on my computer gave better results than shooting mRAW, which is unfortunate because if they could do better downsampling on-camera I would use it.