{"id":8,"date":"2006-11-20T09:33:06","date_gmt":"2006-11-20T13:33:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.backgroundexposure.com\/blog\/index.php\/2006\/11\/20\/my-two-bits\/"},"modified":"2007-02-20T20:20:36","modified_gmt":"2007-02-21T00:20:36","slug":"my-two-bits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.backgroundexposure.com\/blog\/2006\/11\/my-two-bits\/","title":{"rendered":"My Two Bits"},"content":{"rendered":"

Or rather, my 4 bits. Every serious DSLR camera on the market today is capable of capturing image information in more than the common 8 bits per channel (24 bits total). Most, like my Nikon D80, have internal hardware that operates with 12 bits of color information per channel, but as soon as you store the image in traditional JPEG, the extra 4 bits are forgotten. (I say “traditional” JPEG because the new JPEG2000<\/a> standard can store up to 16 bits.) The only way to get the full range of color detail is to use whatever “raw” format your camera supports. For Nikon, this is NEF.<\/p>\n

Is it worth it?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Purists say “yes”, casual photographers say “no”, and everybody in between has an opinion. If I had to give a single, all-encompasing answer, I’d say “no”… yet I have my D80 set to save in “raw”. Why? “Just in case.”<\/p>\n

In fact, my D80 is set to “RAW+JPEG(normal)”. Though this may seem a waste as far as storage goes, it actually saves both time and space. Upon transferring all my photos from camera to computer, I run a script that reads the EXIF data and sorts all the JPEGs in to folders for permanent storage based on the date they were shot. The raw files then all go to a single folder where they await deletion. I use the JPEGs for almost everything, including cropping, printing, and sending to friends. In fact, the only time I use the NEF files are if I think a photo needs significant exposure correction and is worth the time to do so. Only then do I go to the NEF, convert it, do my adjustments, and save it out as an 8-bit image<\/em>. I use the raw files when I have to stretch color\/luminosity information because otherwise you end up with posterization<\/a>. For example, expanding a set of 64 values to full-range 256 (a stretch of 4:1) will leave 3 of every 4 values empty. Much better to exand 1024 values to 4096 (same 4:1 stretch but at 12 bits) and then reduce it to 8-bit, thus still filling the entire final 256-value range.<\/p>\n

<\/a>For the most part, if the color information is not what you want it to be, then the photograph was not exposed correctly in the first place. You’re better off taking more shots, trying to correct the exposure on-site, than trying to correct it later on. There are times, though, when you’re limited by the dynamic range of the camera and you’ll want the extra bits in order to skew the exposure, compressing it at the upper end while expanding it at the lower end. I have to do this with pretty much every sunset or sunrise shot since it’s almost impossible to get the sun, sky, and ground detail at the same time with a digital camera. Film can do it, but digital cannot.<\/p>\n

To summarize, 8-bit resolution is sufficient for display, printing, and most editing. The only use for 10, 12, 14, or 16 bit images is to stretch the intensity values of the colors (together or individually) so that you don’t end up with only a 5, 6, or 7 bit image which is not<\/strong> suitable for display and printing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Or rather, my 4 bits. Every serious DSLR camera on the market today is capable of capturing image information in more than the common 8 bits per channel (24 bits total). Most, like my Nikon D80, have internal hardware that operates with 12 bits of color information per channel, but as soon as you store […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-photography","odd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backgroundexposure.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backgroundexposure.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backgroundexposure.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backgroundexposure.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backgroundexposure.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.backgroundexposure.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backgroundexposure.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backgroundexposure.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backgroundexposure.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}