Filesize of modern DSLR killing?

[twan]

My colleague bought a new 7D 2 weeks ago and showed the new pictures. They look great. Even the high ISO"s he had of pictures of fishes in an aquarium. But...... every single JPG was approx 8 Mb so just one day in a Zoo had a result of 2.9Gb of pictures.....

That's a lot... From my last holiday through alaska and yukon, I had approx 1600 pictures from my 30D. Mainly in RAW format. With a 7D that would be:

Jpg: 1600 * approx 8Mb = 12800Mb
RAW 1600 * 25 Mb = 40000Mb!!

Wow.... that could be a problem and a bigger one of you want to use the movie option too. My old 60Gb imagetank would easily be filled.....

I think I still keep my 30D for a while and just buy better lenses

 

[twan]

I just notice that the filesizes of the 5D mark II seems smaller..
Weird because it has more MP's...

 

[chisquared]

It's a game. Terabyte hard drives are now common and so are 32 GB flash cards.
Also, I hear that 60 GB blue-ray writeable drives are here.
Keeps us buying new stuff.

 

[HotspurJr]

Maybe a year ago, I went down to Fry's, and got 3TB of storage - and a FW housing to hold it - for under $250.

If you're getting a modern DSLR, and you shoot RAW, you need to think about a solution like this.

 

[twan]

I've a netgear NAS with 2T mirrored so that's not a problem.
Í think it could be more an issue during holidays or on the road.

 

[Rakumi]

Hey Twan.. I started a similar thread on MP and how with my 50D, I lower the MP to medium fine which is about 8MP to lower the file size. Some people, like myself, take a lot of pictures. And the majority stay ready for display on your computer but only print a handful. So if you were thinking about upgrading, you can do so and lower your MP count when need be. Because if 8MP works for you 30D, nothing wrong with me occasionally using that on my 50D.
--

Darkness is the monster and your shutter is your sword, aperture your shield and iso your armor. Strike fast with your sword and defend well with your shield and hope your armor holds up.

 

[Wayndom]

While it's true that file sizes are getting big, it's also true that memory is dirt cheap. And since every serious photog should have at least one additional hard drive for backup, why not buy a 500 gigabyte (or whatever is huge at the moment) monster?

I currently shoot RAW+jpeg on my 50D, which means about 30 megs per pic, but I still haven't come close to filling my 160 gig HD.

Besides, now I have some motivation to dump all those shots that will never see the light of day (but in the past got kept out of a knee-jerk, "never throw out a pic" mentality).

So file sizes are bigger now than before, but so what? Apps are bigger too, and so are the hard drives that come with computers. If your computer is old enough to need more space, go spend a couple of bucks on a bigger hard drive.
--

 

[JD6957]

I started out with a Canon XT / 350D then after a year & a half of my hands hurting from a small camera I bought a 30D. I was still shooting JPG with it until I bought a 40D, I moved up to RAW due to the ability to make more corrections if needed. Then I learn switched to sRAW & have been using that for the last year or more. I get 7 to 8 MB pictures in sRAW on the 40D.

Now I also have a 7D & the manual is quoted as 11MB files under sRAW.
The menu & options alone are impressive!

JD

 

[Eugene Powers]

First of all, are you kidding me? 60GB portable storage is a thing of the past, long gone past. You can buy laptop drives for less than $100 for 500GB and I have seen 640GB for less than $100 one time.
Second of all 5D2 can produce 37mb RAW files. Who cares. Storage is cheap.
--
Eugene

The only time a smaller sensor with the same pixel count is superior to a larger sensor (aka higher pixel density) is when you are focal-length limited.

Quote by Lee Jay

 

[Scott Eaton]

-no text-

 

[fschop]

Not everybody needs full-resolution.
Not everybody needs all images.

Shoot sRAW normally and RAW only when you need to.

Frank

 

[mailman88]

.....I filled up one, I'll start another, its cheap too!

 

[twan]

Yes offcourse you are all right guys. Storage is cheap now a days but I don't want to rely on single external harddrives only.

Why... well... I know a story about someone who loses recently every picture she had digitally because someone broke-in into her house and stole all her equipment. Her pictures where on a few single harddrives (as backup) even on a NAS and her laptop. Everything is gone....

Second, if you put a full harddrive into a vault and leave it there for let's say a year without using it, the change that it won't start anymore is very high. Or leave it on for years and switch it off... again the high risk it won't start anymore.

Therefor I always burn my pictures also on DVD's to prevent loss although they will degrade over the times too and you have to copy them every one of 2 years.

 

[Canis_Majoris]

You can get 2.5" external bus powered drives in 1TB and they're about £120 here in the UK. Or for the same money you could probably buy 2x 500gb 2.5" externals if you want two backups!

If you're going to keep up with the latest camera tech then unfortunately you're going to have to keep up with computer/storage tech too, which means decent processors, plenty of RAM, lots of storage, and a decent screen.

Oh, and the latest software too.

It's not a cheap hobby if you want to keep up with the trends.

I don't see a problem personally. I save RAW files and heavily processed TIFF files that can rack up 60mb+ per image and have done for years.

 

[PAUL FERGUSON]

The problem is that most modern pc's cant utilize a hard drive above 2.1 TB as the logical block address standard decided that this was enough space for everyone. in fact the only operating system to support drives in excess of 3TB is the Mac OS X ,a 64 bit

OS running on a motherboard with the Unified Firmware Interface. So any body wanting to fit these massive TB drives on a windows PC is going to be very unlucky. The only way round this is to fit multiple hard discs with a 2TB limit.

 

[Canis_Majoris]

Yeah, but I'm not sure I'd want a single drive any bigger than that. It's a lot of data to lose if it dies.

I've created 7tb data partitions using RAID for customers in the past using Vista (yuck) and GPT with no problems at all.

 

[canes]

Now days when I import my pics off my card I go through them and only import the keepers. That probably means 1 out of every 5 or more. I learned a long time ago that saving everything is a waste of time, space, and more time when you are trying to pick out ones for printing, making galleries etc.

Stop trying to store 1600 pics from a single vacation is my suggestion.

 

[Lajos Hajdu]

Come on... 32 GB+ cards and 1.5-terabyte (1500 GB) HDDs are dirt cheap. File size is no more of an issue than it was when the 30D came out.
--
http://www.pbase.com/laja30/inbox

 

[lekofraggle]

I wonder if the file size keeps going up, it will make us think more about what we are shooting before we shoot. Sure we can always delete after, but what about realizing a photo is just a snapshot before pulling the trigger? There is something to be said for the way film (especially large format) made the artist think about taking a photo. Perhaps at least a little bit, file size may bring that back.

On another note, what do people use for portable backup while on trips? I would rather not bring a computer, but have many external drives. I do get nervous with all of my images just on cards. Any inexpensive backup options? All I can think of is netbook, or iPad. They are not that cheap, and iPad is not really large enough (and won't transfer to external drive).
--
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jrothritchie
http://www.ipernity.com/home/jrothritchie

 

[MitchAlsup]

I think I still keep my 30D for a while and just buy better lenses

While I still live with a 20D......

A 2TB internal drive lists for $110 in Fry's this week end. My internal 1TB drive cost me only $59. It's still going to take a lot of images to fill one of these things up.
--
Mitch