Nikon D600 For Dummies

Raw (NEF): The purist's choice

The second picture file type you can create is Camera Raw, or just Raw (as in “uncooked”) for short.

Each manufacturer has its own flavor of Raw. Nikon's is NEF (for Nikon Electronic Format), so you see the three-letter extension NEF at the end of Nikon image Raw filenames.

Raw pros and cons

Raw is popular with advanced, demanding photographers for these reasons:

• Greater creative control: With JPEG, internal camera software tweaks your images, making adjustments to color, exposure, and sharpness as needed to produce the results that Nikon believes its customers prefer. With Raw, the camera simply records the original, unprocessed image data. The photographer then uses a tool known as a Raw converter to produce the actual image, making decisions about color, exposure, and so on at that point.
• Higher bit depth: Bit depth is a measure of how many color values an image file can contain. With JPEG, pictures contain 8 bits each for the red, blue, and green color components (channels) that make up a digital image, for a total of 24 bits. That translates to roughly 16.7 million possible colors. Choosing the Raw setting delivers a higher bit count. You can set the camera to collect 12 bits per channel or 14 bits per channel.

  Although jumping from 8 to 14 bits sounds like a huge difference, you may never notice any impact on your photos — that 8-bit palette ...