RAW for sports

[photog1107]

I am familiar with the great debate over JPEG versus RAW, so I am not necessarily wanting to open that can of worms in a general sense, but I am curious, for those who shoot a lot of sports, if the case for either JPEG or RAW makes sense just from a shooting speed/porcessing standpoint. I am pushing myself to move more and more into RAW for all its technical benefits, but when shooting burst frames of fast sports, it seems like JPEGs might make more sense. (I am using a 16 GB Sandisk on a Canon 7D.)

Thoughts?

[Doug Pardee]

Originally Posted by photog1107

when shooting burst frames of fast sports, it seems like JPEGs might make more sense. (I am using a 16 GB Sandisk on a Canon 7D.)

Many sports photographers shoot JPEG for exactly that reason. Although… with a fast card in the 7D, you can still rattle off 8 frames per second for 3 seconds before the camera starts gasping for air (according to DPReview tests); how long a burst do you need?

You can also switch to M-Raw, which might give you longer bursts (I can't find any specs on that).

Raw will still present a challenge in the time that it takes to convert that many photos.

[teaking]

With modern cameras card capacity and memory buffers shooting RAW in sports isnt as big of an issue as it once was and in your case it certainly wont be a deciding factor.

I think the thing that will make or break your decision is how much time you want to set aside to process your images. If your confident you can achieve a good exposure and only need minimal colour correction on some shots shoot JPEG. If you feel you may not get your exposure correct or you want to edit your pics past colour correction stage and create artistic shots and need those extra colours for post processing then shoot RAW.

But dont shoot RAW because you think its magically going to make your pictures better choose which works best for your set up.