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Sony Suggestions: RAW File Sizes

Coming from Canon, there are a few things I miss having switched to Sony.

Photography has many places in our society and culture. We use cameras to photograph travels, family, copy artwork, document the world around us. What we wish to do with these photos varies drastically. Sony has done a wonderful job making cameras with sensors that are capable of very high quality extremely large files capable of really, really large prints.

A photo from my Sony A7R2 can make for a huge print of stunning quality. Thing is, we don't always need, or even want to make a tack sharp 20x30" print. I know #thestruggleisreal.

But seriously, for those of us making a living with photography, the inability of shooting RAW files at reduced sizes is a big burden. As an example, I often shoot events. Most of the work is only ever going to be used on the web. Of course I never know for sure what my clients are going to use the images for. But often 12 megapixels would be fine, and 24 is overkill.

Yet with the A7R2, my favorite camera for this sort of work, I have to ingest 42 megapixel raw files. Often thousands of them. I have to have enough cards and buffer space which often is a problem. My present workflow is to dumb down the raw files to lossy DNGs at 6000px on the long side. But I still have to wait for those thousands of 42 megapixel files to process.

Then there's the archiving issue. I don't always do the lossy DNG thing and have tens of thousands of 42 megapixel .ARW files on various hard drives I'm trying to keep organized and archived for the long term. And I really am starting to hate Adobe and would love to be able to rely on Capture One for all my image editing. But now I'm stuck with Adobe in part because of the lossy DNGs.

The obvious solution as I see it is what Canon has had for quite some time. Allowing photographers the option of lower resolution RAW files when they want.

So dear Sony.... please, purdy please, with a cherry on top..... give us the option of smaller RAW files!

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