Nikon D300 User Manual page 147

method makes the most sense to me. It gives me a file size
close to half
of the Uncompressed setting's results. I haven't used
Compressed much since Lossless compressed became
available. Even thought I can't see any image quality loss, it
bothers me that it is there, if only slightly. The extra 10 or 15
percent of extra compression is not worth the potential tiny
data loss to me. If I were running out of card space and
needed just a bit more but wanted to keep shooting RAW, I
might consider changing to Compressed temporarily.
Otherwise, it's Lossless compressed for me!
NEF (RAW) Bit Depth
NEF (RAW) bit depth is a special feature for those of us
concerned with capturing the best color in our images. The
D300(S) has three color channels, one for red, another for
green, and the last one for blue. It combines those color
channels to form all the colors you see in your images. You
may have seen the acronym RGB in your camera study. RGB
stands for red, green, blue—the three color channels. Let's
talk about how bit depth, or the number of colors per channel,
can make your pictures even better.
With the D300(S), you can select the bit depth stored in an
image. More bit depth equals better color gradations. The
default for the D300(S) is 12-bits, or 4,096 colors per RGB
channel. Or you can switch it to 14-bits, or 16,385 colors per
RGB channel (as shown in Figure 3-15). In lesser DSLR
cameras, the color information is limited to 12-bits. If you do
not fully understand what this means, take a look at Channel
and Bit Depth Tutorial following this section. As mentioned
above, the D300(S) has the following two bit depths
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