# jpg vs. RAW...



## Jesse (Dec 20, 2012)

For timelapses. Discuss. Does it depend on how far apart your intervals are so the camera has enough buffer time, etc?


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## Jim K (Dec 20, 2012)

Well, if your timelapses are in the range of 8 fps you will run into a buffer problem. If you are at 1 fps or slower you won't run into a buffer problem with RAW, JPEG or RAW+JPEG. In between there will be a problem at some point depending on the camera and CF card you use.

What camera and CF cards are you using? What rate are you shooting at? How long are you shooting for?


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## bluegreenturtle (Dec 20, 2012)

Why would you shoot a timelapse at 8fps - might as well just shoot video and speed up a little in post. 

I shoot in jpg because for my purposes (slotting in to 1080p videos) even lowest quality jpgs on a modern dslr are overkill. For general purpose (generally showing a sunset, or traffic at night, etc) I use 1fps and give a bit of long shutter at night.


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## Jesse (Dec 20, 2012)

I'm shooting on a 5D3. 

I get that for a timelapse eventually the footage will be 1080p, which is way lower quality than jpg. I guess a better question would be, is it worth it to shoot in RAW, then edit the photos (edit one and apply to the rest) and then convert to jpg?


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## awinphoto (Dec 20, 2012)

oh lord not another jpg vs raw debate... depends on what you eventually plan on doing... if your eventually converting to video, a lot of the crisp sharpness would be lost due to movement and rapidness, but ultimate sharpness is something the 5d3 video standard out even lacks... I would say for video, the ever so loss in detail vs raw may look smoother in a video setting as it really sharp raws may look for staccato and rough, like shooting video a 1/500 can do... but it goes down to taste and really how much work you want to put in this project.


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## Axilrod (Dec 20, 2012)

Personally for time lapse stuff I mainly use RAW, but if it's something during the day that I know won't need much adjustment I'll go JPEG. If you do shoot RAW make sure that you have a big enough card. Main thing with time lapse is to prepare in advance as much as possible, you don't want to waste tons of shutter clicks and then have it turn out bad.


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## paul13walnut5 (Dec 21, 2012)

I use JPEG for timelapse.

Life is too short. 

I render out of QTP at full source res at APRHQ (massive massive files) which I then crop or resize in After Effects (if I'm doing any movements) or on my video time if I'm not.

I typically add .5px gaussian blur in anycase, so any other percieved benefit of shooting RAW is negated.

I tend to keep my DSLR video 8bit, so any extra colour depth benefit is lost.

Try and get it as right as you can in camera, and keep the compression as low as you can therafter.

On three occassions doing video I've had to go to uncompressed, and it was for problematic bokeh compression, not shots where there is lots of movement or detail.


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## solargravity (Feb 7, 2013)

paul13walnut5 said:


> I use JPEG for timelapse.
> 
> Life is too short.



I agree with you about JPEG for time-lapse. I was wasting so much time and space processing my raw files. It was a hassle dealing with the file maintenance. Don't get me wrong. I love RAW and it's my preferred method for still photography but the benefits for time-lapse are minimal.

For a while I was cheating and just shooting video and speeding it up in post. With my primary background and profession as a motion designer for a video production studio this is a major NO NO. However, I was lazy and low and behold one day I really needed to zoom in and catch something that I was not expecting way off in the distance. Unfortunately, the resolution was not there and I learned my lesson. Which really was not a lesson since I KNOW better than that. So I chalked it up to be a good dose of self punishment because I'm sure that if I could have blown in on this particular region of the video I would have had a once in a lifetime time-lapse capture instead of a cluster of blurry pixels.

Has anyone cheating time lapse with video ever been stuck like this before ?


Erik
www.solargravity.com


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## Mt Spokane Photography (Feb 7, 2013)

Jesse said:


> I'm shooting on a 5D3.
> 
> I get that for a timelapse eventually the footage will be 1080p, which is way lower quality than jpg. I guess a better question would be, is it worth it to shoot in RAW, then edit the photos (edit one and apply to the rest) and then convert to jpg?


You can also do the same with jpg. Lightroom will let you edit one and then synch to a string. Jpg might be better merely because of the smaller file size, a card can fill up pretty fast.


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## cayenne (Feb 7, 2013)

Is there a rule of thumb about how many frames per second you want to be shooting?


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## m (Feb 7, 2013)

How about that answer within your question?



> jpg v*s. RAW*



Does your camera support that?


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## bchernicoff (Feb 7, 2013)

cayenne said:


> Is there a rule of thumb about how many frames per second you want to be shooting?



There are two formulas I use depending on the situation. If you know you want to speed up reality 10x it means you will need 1/10 the number of frames per second. If your final video is 24fps, this means you need to capture 2.4 frames per second. My intervalometer only goes down to 1fps, which means the least amount I can speed up reality is 24x, assuming 24fps playback.

On the other hand, if you know that you want to make a 30 second clip that plays at 24fps, you know you will need 30*24 or 720 total frames. If you know that you want to capture 1 hour of reality (3600 seconds), you're interval would be 3600 seconds/720 frames or 5 seconds between frames(interval).


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## Don Haines (Feb 11, 2013)

Jesse said:


> For timelapses. Discuss. Does it depend on how far apart your intervals are so the camera has enough buffer time, etc?


On a 60D, you can shoot at 5.9 frames per second forever if you are saving as jpeg with a fast memory card. better cameras shold be more, worse cameras less.

If your camera supports magic lantern, you can use it's intervalometer..... most intervalometers are in 1 second increments. I doubt you will find a camera that can't keep up to 1 shot per second with jpegs or in raw at 2 shots per second.

Battery life is going to be your biggest worry. Set the camera to manual focus, you don't want it trying to focus before every shot, particularly with a 1 second interval. If you can turn off the back screen, do it. If you have wifi or gps, turn it off. These things eat batteries.... The 60D is rated for about 800 shots on a new battery and I get 1200 shots on an old battery WITHOUT draining it.


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