Do you shoot sports in RAW?

[ipsofacto]

I try to as much as possible, but with the D200 I'd easily need 20+ GB of cards to cover a whole game. So I can see a D2H/s shooter doing raw, but Mike Mac, Alex, you guys shooting D2Xs, are you really shooting RAW for everything?

 

[Jim Hall]

I try to as much as possible, but with the D200 I'd easily need 20+ GB of cards to cover a whole game. So I can see a D2H/s shooter doing raw, but Mike Mac, Alex, you guys shooting D2Xs, are you really shooting RAW for everything?

Hey ipsofacto!
Shooting a D2Xs, and use compressed RAW. I find the flexibility during post processing is a must for me. I'm still not real good straight out of the camera yet. I don't mind the extra computer time. Matter of fact it saves me time because it's easier than trying to invent techniques using JPEG files.

BTW, welcome to the forum. Can we call you by your first name?

Best Wishes,

 

[ipsofacto]

Thanks for the welcome. I go by Dale. How many GB of CF do you go through in an average game? I take between 1200-1600 shots a game, and thats looking like 4 or 5 4gb cards to me. Whats your take?

 

[mike mac]

I shoot all my sports jpg, for one the companies I shoot for request it they or I for that fact dont have the time to process all those RAW files. The second does come down to storage requirements they would be come huge arching all that RAW data.

 

[Jim Hall]

Thanks for the welcome. I go by Dale. How many GB of CF do you go through in an average game? I take between 1200-1600 shots a game, and thats looking like 4 or 5 4gb cards to me. Whats your take?

Welcome Dale. What little sports I shoot, I don't use High or Low Continuous very much. I shoot single shots when possible and try to anticipate what's getting ready to happen next. My keeper rate is pretty good doing this (not as good as others around here). Therefore, my shot count is considerably less. I'm not very good firing off 5/8 frames per second. I can shoot an entire soccer game with lots of action with less than one 4GB card shooting compressed RAW.

 

[GBRandy]

I shoot all my high ISO low light sports in RAW. I have four, 4 gig extreme III & IV cards and a couple o 2 gig ones. These cards are mud cheap. The WB challenges I face at th YMCA gyms for gymnastics dictate it. The PP latitude from a night HS football field is nice.

For daylight stuff I shoot JPG's....if I remember to change the setting

 

[GBRandy]

Thanks for the welcome. I go by Dale. How many GB of CF do you go through in an average game? I take between 1200-1600 shots a game, and thats looking like 4 or 5 4gb cards to me. Whats your take?

Man are we spoiled or what? I shoot 600 shots at a gymnastics event easy. 1200 at a Football game is not out of the question....but just think about that...

1200 shots = 33 rolls of 36 exposure film. Factor in $5 for the film and $8 for processing and that's $433! I would shoot maybe 5 rolls of film at a football game....and that was a lot.

CF Cards are cheap cheap cheap cheap.

 

[acena]

I try to as much as possible, but with the D200 I'd easily need 20+ GB of cards to cover a whole game. So I can see a D2H/s shooter doing raw, but Mike Mac, Alex, you guys shooting D2Xs, are you really shooting RAW for everything?

I only shoot RAW when shooting indoor sports when I did not have lights powerful enough to over come the ambient by several stops. Now I just go JPG all the way. Just too lazy and try to keep my post production to cropping. It really is best to get it right out of the camera the first time unless you enjoy spending gobs of time fixing every picture. Sure it only takes a 30-60 seconds let's say. But I shot five games this weekend, plus team and portraits for another 5 teams so that came out to almost 4000 pictures. Kept about 250 per game for 1250 images plus another 500 for the T&I that's 1,750 images to fix. Assume 30 seconds per image and you are looking at 875 minutes of post-production. The math does not work.

 

[eng45ine]

I shoot JPG files.....actually, I have never shot a RAW file in my life.

 

[Mason]

I shoot everything RAW. With the D2H...as you guessed, it is not a big deal. With the D200 I am chewing through about a 4GB in a evening. I am using both the D200 and the D2H so that helps some. I would feel comfortable shooting a day game jpeg, but I like the WB adjusting options I get shooting RAW at night. Now the big deal for me isn’t the cards…it is not wanting to by a new external hard drive + an additional drive for backup every six months!

 

[topher04r1]

I do everything in RAW .... it's worth the 30 seconds of PP time for me.... i try to focus more on quality....typically one soccer game shot raw for me will fill a 2GB cf card ..... not bad if you think about it....

 

[twig]

Yes, I shoot in RAW, I fill an 8GB card on the Xs with about 1000 images per game, then PP about 75-100 for publication. The post takes 1-3 hours, including detailed captioning of images, and I think it is worthwhile.

I still use RawShooter Pro, becasue it is the fastest processor out there, real-time image updates, under 30 seconds per image, captioning and key-word tagging in Photo Mechanic takes MUCH longer.

 

[Brew]

I tried RAW a few times and found the extra computer time was not worth the results that I was getting. So now it's JPG for me for sports, for other low number photos I'll shoot RAW.

 

[Snipps]

For indoor its all RAW, but for outdoor I shoot JPG, unless it is a night game.

 

[ironhorse]

I shoot all of my outdoor sports in JPG. If indoor lighting is difficult I will use RAW. Even with D1h files it would take forever to process a great number of RAW files with my iBook G4. I normally shoot 300 - 400 images during a baseball game and find it difficult to imagine shooting 1200-1600.

 

[ipsofacto]

I wish I had the luxury of shooting less than 500 frames. The papers I work for and the parents that order want as many to choose from as possible. I hardly shoot at 5 fps, I always use focus lock so that pretty much guarantees I wont. Mike or Alex, do you have settings you use in camera to process the jpgs? I dont mind doing the PP on RAW, I mean if the shots actually any good you can usually just press save and youll be alright.

 

[Randy]

100% raw....when u lose an entire game to WB or EV shooting jpg there's no going back (got me 3 times in the last 4 months)
i will not sacrifice repair insurance, IQ and more image detail for disk space

 

[acena]

I wish I had the luxury of shooting less than 500 frames. The papers I work for and the parents that order want as many to choose from as possible. I hardly shoot at 5 fps, I always use focus lock so that pretty much guarantees I wont. Mike or Alex, do you have settings you use in camera to process the jpgs? I dont mind doing the PP on RAW, I mean if the shots actually any good you can usually just press save and youll be alright.

Depends on the event, the venue and the lighting. There is no magical setting. You need to learn your camera

Whether you shoot JPG or RAW you should get as much right out of the camera as much as possible. Also, it depends on what you need. If you shoot a game and need half a dozen for the paper or even maybe 100 for a booster club that's one thing, but let's say you are shooting a two day 100 team tournament. That's a lot of images to process. You need to get it right out of the camera no matter how you shoot it RAW or JPG.

 

[ipsofacto]

Im not having a problem getting anything other than colors right. The colors just are a bit off. Its odd

 

[Brandon Mizar]

I always shoot RAW no matter the situation. I just feel comfortable knowing I am capturing every bit of detail possible and I find batching them just as fast as trying to change WB and curves in post with JPGs.