Shooting a 5DSR in M RAW Vs 5D MK III

[adventureous]

A quote from this article https://photographylife.com/sraw-format-explained

"As you can see, Canon’s sRAW and mRAW files are simply down-sampled images from the original full-resolution RAW files. If you were to take a RAW file, then down-sample it yourself in Photoshop, you would get a similar result. Except you would have the full RAW file data to work with in wide gamut color space, while sRAW actually strips out a lot of information. So sRAW is actually not anything like the original RAW file!"

This is my exact experience. "So sRAW (and MRAW) is actually not anything like the original RAW file!" I tried shooting in MRaw and SRAW on my 5DII and made adjustments in LR and it was very crappy. So shoot in the full RAW, make adjustments in LR and then down-sample in LR to the MRAW or SRAW size and it is good. The same thing should happen with the 5DS except the file size is bigger to begin with so the down-sampled image should be great.

 

[Frodo]

I too have similar questions to the OP and am considering moving up from my 5DII.

It would be great if more DSLRs used pixel-binning. This is where the signal from four or nine pixels is aggregated into one signal. This increases the effective size of the pixels and reduces noise at a significant cost in resolution. My G10 employed this and produced 1.9 megapixel images. Noise definitely declined at high ISOs but I found that the reduced file size limited the value of this. Now if the 50 megapixel 5DS used pixel binning, that would be exciting! 7MP would be very useable.

However the mRAW is simply reducing file size by throwing away information. I have used this occasionally when going on family vacations simply to use storage space with my 5DII. And then there is an image I wish to crop heavily or enlarge significantly...

 

[Mardave8080]

It would be great if more DSLRs used pixel-binning. This is where the signal from four or nine pixels is aggregated into one signal. This increases the effective size of the pixels and reduces noise at a significant cost in resolution. My G10 employed this and produced 1.9 megapixel images. Noise definitely declined at high ISOs but I found that the reduced file size limited the value of this. Now if the 50 megapixel 5DS used pixel binning, that would be exciting! 7MP would be very useable.

Thank you Frodo. I wasn't aware it was called 'Pixel Binning' but you've just described what I was hoping the 5DS would be capable of offering as an option with MRAW, a way of utilising the data gathering power of 50MP but for those occasions when you want a smaller file but still retaining reasonable resolution and low noise.

Having heard from other respondents and read other articles I now realise MRAW is a different beast altogether and doesn't offer what I was after but perhaps Pixel Binning could.

If the 5DS doesn't provide an option as standard, I wonder if the clever folks behind Magic Lantern could find a way!?