Nikon D300 User Manual page 143

NEF (RAW) Recording
(User's Manual: D300S page 70; D300 page 58)
NEF (RAW) recording is composed of two menu
choices—Type and NEF (RAW) bit depth. Type is concerned
with image compression, while bit depth deals with color
quality. We'll look into both of these choices and see how our
photography can benefit from them.
NEF (RAW) Type
In previous sections we discussed how JPEG files have
different levels of compression that vary the size of a finished
image file. NEF (RAW) also has compression choices, though
not as many. The nice thing about the RAW compression
methods is that they don't throw away massive amounts of
image data like JPEG compression does. RAW is not
considered a lossy format because the file stays complete,
with virtually all the image data your camera captured.
One of the compression methods, called Compressed, is very
slightly lossy. The other, Lossless compressed, keeps all the
image data intact. Let's discuss how each of the available
compression methods works.
There are three NEF (RAW) formats available, although you
only see a single NEF (RAW) selection on the Image quality
menu. Once you've selected NEF (RAW), you'll need to use
Shooting Menu > NEF (RAW) recording > Type to select one
of the three NEF (RAW) compression types:
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