50D Raw vs SRAW1

[MARINERMAGNUM]

The other nite Mike [micpic] and I were doing some tests and I was very suprised at some raw vs sraw1 results. For those not familiar,the 50d's raw file is 15.1 mp and the sraw1 is 7.1 mp-a smaller raw file about the size of a 20/30D raw file.

The 15mp files are way to much for most people-me included-unless you plan to do some huge prints.

Very small amounts of pixelation will most likely not be noticed on a huge print-as you don't stand with your nose up against it.

I'll most likely be shooting sraw1 from now on-unless for special apps-and here's why:

Upsizing the sraw1 file to anything below 200% yields results which are almost identical to a 100% 15mp raw file. I have printed the results and found this to be true.

Canon must be doing some sizing magic in the digic 4 processor-that's all I can theorize.

The sraw1 files are much smaller,faster,and 99% as good when upsized. Maybe I got a fluke camera,but printed results don't lie. I wouldn't think there would be enough DPI for a decent print,but they sure look good.

These shots were converted to jpeg in DPP,and cropped and sized in PS. In camera sharpening was at 4,no other sharpening applied-so they may look soft.

100% crop from 15.1mp raw file-file size-4750 pixels wide:

Crop from Sraw1 file that was upsized to 200%-6500 pixels wide.