Typical D300 File Sizes; Compressed Nefs - Nikon D300 Complete Manual

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Table of Contents

available. See the separate Introduction to Nikon Software

eBook that accompanied this eBook for more discussion of

the software used for conversions.

NEF files are larger than JPEGs:

Typical D300 File Sizes

Uncompressed NEF

Lossless Compressed NEF 16.7MB 13.6MB

Compressed NEF

For NEF+JPEG just add the appropriate NEF and JPEG figures

together. File sizes are approximate due to compression effects and

also sector size differences. The numbers reported above are

Nikon's. In practice, I find Compressed NEFs actually tend to be a

bit smaller than Nikon's numbers.

The D300 supports two types of compressed NEF files. One

version is said to be "lossless" (and labeled as such in the

camera), while the other is said by Nikon to be either

"virtually lossless" or "visually lossless," meaning that results

visually indistinguishable from those that would be produced

by the original data can be recovered.

Lossless compressed NEF

Compressed NEF

"Visually lossless" isn't quite the same thing as "lossless." In

the truly lossless version the original data is recovered exactly

when the data is later uncompressed, so we don't have to

worry about or discuss further what happens with the data in

the Lossless compressed NEF option.

Thom Hogan's Complete Guide to the Nikon D300

25.3MB 19.4MB

14.2MB 11.3MB

truly lossless

visually lossless