raw files are HUGE

I tried winzip and winrar but they cant compress them much. Is there
anything else which works?

In article om,
Sameer wrote:

I tried winzip and winrar but they cant compress them much. Is there
anything else which works?


Raw files come out of the camera pretty close to as efficient as they
are going to get. You're not going to be very sucessful in attempting
to compress them further, regardless of the program or compression
scheme that you try.

You think a raw file is huge? Try converting it to .tif and see where
it goes. My 8-9 megabyte raws go to 57.8 MB when converted to 16 bit
..tif files.

Besides, what's the problem? Storage has never been cheaper - I just
picked up [yet another] Maxtor 300 GB Firewire/USB drive from Costco
for $149, including cables... that's 50 cents a gig. That makes 3
250GB, 1 400GB, and 2 300 GB drives attached to my system.


memory lane trip
I remember the first commercially available hard drive [1981, the Apple
ProFile, available for the Apple /// computer, subsequently (1983) with
a controller card that allowed its use on the Apple //[e|c]], it
contained a single Seagate ST-506 HD with a whoppin' 5 MEGAbytes of
storage space (and no one at the time thought you could *ever* fill it
up) and close to $5000 new (IIRC) - almost $1000 per MEGAbyte. These
things were almost as big as a tower case is now, and weighed about as
much as a tank. Later, the massive 10 megabyte model was released.
/memory lane

--
You need only reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a
reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating
the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the struggle for
independence.
-- Charles A. Beard

Ken Lucke wrote:

Besides, what's the problem? Storage has never been cheaper - I just
picked up [yet another] Maxtor 300 GB Firewire/USB drive from Costco
for $149, including cables... that's 50 cents a gig. That makes 3
250GB, 1 400GB, and 2 300 GB drives attached to my system.


I have surely appreciated the crazy explosion in flash memory capacity,
but hard drives are not keeping pace. I was just looking for a drive
today and was disappointed that hard drive prices haven't fallen more
since I bought my last drive a few years ago.

For instance:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,77543-page,1/article.html

"Less than a year ago, a $300, 80GB desktop drive was considered huge;
today you can find a 160GB drive for the same price."

That was in January of 02'! According to this, between January of '01
and January of '02 capacity doubled to 160 GB while the price remained
constant. If that trend had continued, you could now buy a 5 terabyte
drive for $300. Instead it's $300 for 750GB.

Consulting pricewatch from 4 years ago, I came up with the following
annual growth rates:

Flash: 138%
Hard drive: 32%
RAM: 19%

For comparison, Moore stated his "Law" at 100% per year in 1965,
and at 41% (doubling every other year) in 1975. It is often quoted at
doubling every 18 months, which would be 59% per year.

Yeah, I'm spoiled. But compared to last century, this one isn't doing
so hot. (Except for Flash).





For the interested, here's the data I used:

Look at pricewatch on the internet archive from 4 years ago:
http://web.archive.org/web/20030128022327/http://www.pricewatch.com/
A 120GB drive was $117, and the maximum available size was 250GB.

Now, 4 years later, that same $120 will buy you a 400 GB drive and the
max available size is 750GB.
http://www.pricewatch.com/hard_drives/
So in 4 years, price is basically constant while capacity has gone up by
a little more than a factor of 3.

Meanwhile, using the same sources, 4 years ago a 256 MB usb flash drive
was $75. Today for $79 you get an 8 GB flash. That's a factor of 32!

In 2002, 1GB of PC133 RAM would set you back $144.
In 2007, for the same price you can get 1 GB ddr2-1066 1gb or 2GB
DDR2-400. The cheapest 1GB module now is PC100 for $60.
So in 4 years, RAM has only doubled in capacity for the same price.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore's_law

On Sat, 03 Mar 2007 18:16:40 -0800, Sameer wrote:


I tried winzip and winrar but they cant compress them much. Is there
anything else which works?

That is because, like executable files, there is much entropy there. The
data is inherently not very compressible. I note on my 5mp camera that
jpegs run 1-2mb; raws are around 8-9mb; and tiffs are 15mb - I guess it's
all relative - I can still pack a lot of pictures on a $25 2gb memory card.

Some cameras don't compress their raw files. For example the Pentax K10D
doesn't compress the DNG raw files, but does compress the PEF raw files. I
shoot DNG, when I get home I use the Adobe DNG converter to compress the DNG
files in to DNG files. This takes their size from about 16MB to about half
that at around 8MB. Try using Adobe DNG converter, it is free and can
downloaded off the Adobe site and it may give you smaller files.

TGC Ltd.

"Sameer" wrote in message
ps.com...

I tried winzip and winrar but they cant compress them much. Is there
anything else which works?

timeOday wrote:
Ken Lucke wrote:

Besides, what's the problem? Storage has never been cheaper - I just
picked up [yet another] Maxtor 300 GB Firewire/USB drive from Costco
for $149, including cables... that's 50 cents a gig. That makes 3
250GB, 1 400GB, and 2 300 GB drives attached to my system.


I have surely appreciated the crazy explosion in flash memory
capacity, but hard drives are not keeping pace. I was just looking
for a drive today and was disappointed that hard drive prices haven't
fallen more since I bought my last drive a few years ago.

For instance:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,77543-page,1/article.html

"Less than a year ago, a $300, 80GB desktop drive was considered huge;
today you can find a 160GB drive for the same price."

That was in January of 02'! According to this, between January of '01
and January of '02 capacity doubled to 160 GB while the price remained
constant. If that trend had continued, you could now buy a 5 terabyte
drive for $300. Instead it's $300 for 750GB.

Consulting pricewatch from 4 years ago, I came up with the following
annual growth rates:

Flash: 138%
Hard drive: 32%
RAM: 19%

For comparison, Moore stated his "Law" at 100% per year in 1965,
and at 41% (doubling every other year) in 1975. It is often quoted at
doubling every 18 months, which would be 59% per year.

Yeah, I'm spoiled. But compared to last century, this one isn't doing
so hot. (Except for Flash).





For the interested, here's the data I used:

Look at pricewatch on the internet archive from 4 years ago:
http://web.archive.org/web/20030128022327/http://www.pricewatch.com/
A 120GB drive was $117, and the maximum available size was 250GB.

Now, 4 years later, that same $120 will buy you a 400 GB drive and the
max available size is 750GB.
http://www.pricewatch.com/hard_drives/
So in 4 years, price is basically constant while capacity has gone up
by a little more than a factor of 3.

Meanwhile, using the same sources, 4 years ago a 256 MB usb flash
drive was $75. Today for $79 you get an 8 GB flash. That's a factor
of 32!
In 2002, 1GB of PC133 RAM would set you back $144.
In 2007, for the same price you can get 1 GB ddr2-1066 1gb or 2GB
DDR2-400. The cheapest 1GB module now is PC100 for $60.
So in 4 years, RAM has only doubled in capacity for the same price.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore's_law

That isnt as true with the best after rebate prices.

timeOday wrote:

Ken Lucke wrote:

Besides, what's the problem? Storage has never been cheaper - I just
picked up [yet another] Maxtor 300 GB Firewire/USB drive from Costco
for $149, including cables... that's 50 cents a gig. That makes 3
250GB, 1 400GB, and 2 300 GB drives attached to my system.


I have surely appreciated the crazy explosion in flash memory capacity,
but hard drives are not keeping pace. I was just looking for a drive
today and was disappointed that hard drive prices haven't fallen more
since I bought my last drive a few years ago.


There has been a lot of consolidation in the hard drive industry,
resulting in an oligopoly. Without competitive pressures, prices
will not decline at the same pace.

For instance:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,77543-page,1/article.html

"Less than a year ago, a $300, 80GB desktop drive was considered huge;
today you can find a 160GB drive for the same price."

That was in January of 02'! According to this, between January of '01
and January of '02 capacity doubled to 160 GB while the price remained
constant. If that trend had continued, you could now buy a 5 terabyte
drive for $300. Instead it's $300 for 750GB.

Consulting pricewatch from 4 years ago, I came up with the following
annual growth rates:

Flash: 138%
Hard drive: 32%
RAM: 19%

For comparison, Moore stated his "Law" at 100% per year in 1965,
and at 41% (doubling every other year) in 1975. It is often quoted at
doubling every 18 months, which would be 59% per year.

Yeah, I'm spoiled. But compared to last century, this one isn't doing
so hot. (Except for Flash).





For the interested, here's the data I used:

Look at pricewatch on the internet archive from 4 years ago:
http://web.archive.org/web/20030128022327/http://www.pricewatch.com/
A 120GB drive was $117, and the maximum available size was 250GB.

Now, 4 years later, that same $120 will buy you a 400 GB drive and the
max available size is 750GB.
http://www.pricewatch.com/hard_drives/
So in 4 years, price is basically constant while capacity has gone up by
a little more than a factor of 3.

Meanwhile, using the same sources, 4 years ago a 256 MB usb flash drive
was $75. Today for $79 you get an 8 GB flash. That's a factor of 32!

In 2002, 1GB of PC133 RAM would set you back $144.
In 2007, for the same price you can get 1 GB ddr2-1066 1gb or 2GB
DDR2-400. The cheapest 1GB module now is PC100 for $60.
So in 4 years, RAM has only doubled in capacity for the same price.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore's_law



--
The e-mail address in our reply-to line is reversed in an attempt to
minimize spam. Our true address is of the form .

CJT wrote:
timeOday wrote:

Ken Lucke wrote:

Besides, what's the problem? Storage has never been cheaper - I
just picked up [yet another] Maxtor 300 GB Firewire/USB drive from
Costco for $149, including cables... that's 50 cents a gig. That
makes 3 250GB, 1 400GB, and 2 300 GB drives attached to my system.


I have surely appreciated the crazy explosion in flash memory
capacity, but hard drives are not keeping pace. I was just looking
for a drive today and was disappointed that hard drive prices
haven't fallen more since I bought my last drive a few years ago.


There has been a lot of consolidation in the hard drive industry,
resulting in an oligopoly. Without competitive pressures, prices
will not decline at the same pace.

Have fun explaining how come you dont get the same
effect with flash ram which has the same problem.

For instance:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,77543-page,1/article.html

"Less than a year ago, a $300, 80GB desktop drive was considered
huge; today you can find a 160GB drive for the same price."

That was in January of 02'! According to this, between January of
'01 and January of '02 capacity doubled to 160 GB while the price
remained constant. If that trend had continued, you could now buy a
5 terabyte drive for $300. Instead it's $300 for 750GB.

Consulting pricewatch from 4 years ago, I came up with the following
annual growth rates:

Flash: 138%
Hard drive: 32%
RAM: 19%

For comparison, Moore stated his "Law" at 100% per year in 1965,
and at 41% (doubling every other year) in 1975. It is often quoted
at doubling every 18 months, which would be 59% per year.

Yeah, I'm spoiled. But compared to last century, this one isn't
doing so hot. (Except for Flash).





For the interested, here's the data I used:

Look at pricewatch on the internet archive from 4 years ago:
http://web.archive.org/web/20030128022327/http://www.pricewatch.com/
A 120GB drive was $117, and the maximum available size was 250GB.

Now, 4 years later, that same $120 will buy you a 400 GB drive and
the max available size is 750GB.
http://www.pricewatch.com/hard_drives/
So in 4 years, price is basically constant while capacity has gone
up by a little more than a factor of 3.

Meanwhile, using the same sources, 4 years ago a 256 MB usb flash
drive was $75. Today for $79 you get an 8 GB flash. That's a
factor of 32! In 2002, 1GB of PC133 RAM would set you back $144.
In 2007, for the same price you can get 1 GB ddr2-1066 1gb or 2GB
DDR2-400. The cheapest 1GB module now is PC100 for $60.
So in 4 years, RAM has only doubled in capacity for the same price.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore's_law

CJT wrote:
timeOday wrote:

Ken Lucke wrote:

Besides, what's the problem? Storage has never been cheaper - I just
picked up [yet another] Maxtor 300 GB Firewire/USB drive from Costco
for $149, including cables... that's 50 cents a gig. That makes 3
250GB, 1 400GB, and 2 300 GB drives attached to my system.


I have surely appreciated the crazy explosion in flash memory
capacity, but hard drives are not keeping pace. I was just looking
for a drive today and was disappointed that hard drive prices haven't
fallen more since I bought my last drive a few years ago.


There has been a lot of consolidation in the hard drive industry,
resulting in an oligopoly. Without competitive pressures, prices
will not decline at the same pace.

Kinda gotta consider where you shop as well.

Right now, a retail-boxed internal 300GB/16MB Maxtor SATA drive (exact model
unspecified) would cost me CDN$236(!!!) at Staples... meanwhile my regular
retailer sells a 500GB/16MB SATA-II packed only in an antistatic bag, for
CDN$169 (they don't even list a 300, but a 250 is $85-$95). That's a lotta
extra cash for a cardboard box and "installation instructions".

Also, check your warranties. If Maxtor is anything like Intel you get really
poor warranties with OEM (plastic bag only) items. If you buy a retail CPU
and a retail motherboard Intel gives you the warranty through them for 3
years on each. If you go OEM they don't warrant anything and leave it up to
the place you bought it. For example an OEM CPU from TigerDirect has a 1
year warranty and it is through them.

So make sure that the extra you pay isn't for warranty. Though honestly the
price difference still doesn't warrant that. If a drive or CPU or
Motherboard is going to fail it would surely do it within a year. Just make
sure that you do get a warranty and if it is handled by the place you buy
from that you can count on them being in business for at least the length of
warranty.

TGC Ltd.


"Matt Ion" wrote in message
news:uNIGh.1221431$5R2.461484@pd7urf3no...
CJT wrote:
timeOday wrote:

Ken Lucke wrote:

Besides, what's the problem? Storage has never been cheaper - I just
picked up [yet another] Maxtor 300 GB Firewire/USB drive from Costco
for $149, including cables... that's 50 cents a gig. That makes 3
250GB, 1 400GB, and 2 300 GB drives attached to my system.


I have surely appreciated the crazy explosion in flash memory capacity,
but hard drives are not keeping pace. I was just looking for a drive
today and was disappointed that hard drive prices haven't fallen more
since I bought my last drive a few years ago.


There has been a lot of consolidation in the hard drive industry,
resulting in an oligopoly. Without competitive pressures, prices
will not decline at the same pace.

Kinda gotta consider where you shop as well.

Right now, a retail-boxed internal 300GB/16MB Maxtor SATA drive (exact
model unspecified) would cost me CDN$236(!!!) at Staples... meanwhile my
regular retailer sells a 500GB/16MB SATA-II packed only in an antistatic
bag, for CDN$169 (they don't even list a 300, but a 250 is $85-$95).
That's a lotta extra cash for a cardboard box and "installation
instructions".