But image quality is contextual, in that a much higher level of image quality is required to produce a beautiful 30×20″ print than is required for a good web photo. Consider the image above. This image of a sidecar team from the recent BSB weekend at Knockhill is fine for web use. But it’s nearly 1:1 from the original as shot (cropped to 1082 pixels wide and displayed at 1020 wide).

See how much of the original 12.1-megapixel image I’ve cropped out? I couldn’t make a large print from this instance, but it’s fine for web use, which as you probably know, is an ever-growing percentage of how photographs are viewed.

This past weekend at the Knockhill British Superbikes round, I wasn’t planning on making large, high quality prints from any of the images I’d take away from that event. I had something else on my mind that will come up shortly in a post here on the PhotoGP website. Given that this was my goal for those Knockhill images, I brought the D700 rather than the D4 or the D3X. The D700 offered plenty of resolution for web use, and would have the lowest short- and long-term overhead savings.

Raw Format File Size Examples

To show you just how much of a difference we’re talking about here, I made some sample exposures with my three bodies so we could compare the numbers. We will see the differences between Compressed Raw, Lossless Compressed Raw, and Uncompressed Raw files for each of the three bodies mentioned above.

Compression varies from image to image depending on the pixel values in that specific image, so the numbers above for the compressed files are unique examples intended to represent the general differences between the formats.

The Uncompressed file sizes show the real world differences between 12.1-megapixel (D700), 16.2-megapixel (D4) and 24.4-megapixel (D3X) cameras, and they also show why I choose to record images in camera using the Lossless Compressed option. The Compressed option only saves a small percentage of file size compared to Lossless (which reduces image size as far as possible without any loss of image quality), but the Lossless saves A LOT of file size over Uncompressed.

Lossless Compressed allows me to shoot in raw format but not have to manage a much higher file size required by Uncompressed raw files. So that’s one saving I suggest you consider for your raw files. Another is the bit depth. Nikon cameras offer 12-bit and 14-bit depths. I have not been able to detect a noticeable difference between the two, so I have all three bodies set to 12-bit Lossless Compressed for raw file capture.

You may be thinking that as I was intending from the start to use the Knockhill images only for the website, I might have saved even more file size overhead by switching to jpg just for this occasion. I have done this in the past, and even on Fine Quality compression I still find things I don’t like from in-camera jpgs. As I want the images displayed here to be as good as they can be, I’m willing to manage Lossless Compressed raw files for the originals and create the web-use jpgs myself.

I encourage you to experiment with the various types of raw files and bit depths your camera(s) offers to find which combination best suits your needs.

Photograph: ©2015 by Scott Jones / PHOTO.GP – All Rights Reserved

Photo Editor posts are intended not as examples of what YOU should do, but as examples of the decisions the author made to achieve the results he or she desired. We hope these posts will suggest possibilities of technique and editing to help you find the look you want for your own images.

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