NX200 Raw file break down

Ok very busy at the moment so I haven't had time to comment on this big 14bit-12bit debate. I've writen some software to work on the NX200 Raw files and can confirm that 14-bit data was never stored there its only ever been 12-bit.

What Samsung did with the Fw 1.00 to 1.03 Raw was to write the 12-bit values as 16-bit numbers. This is a big waste of space as the NX100 packed those 12-bits into 3 bytes(24-bit) and thus had files that were actually 25% smaller for the same information. The NX100 had big 5-7mb full size jpg but the NX200 only has 1-1.5mb full size JPG. Thats why using the NX200 to review raw pictures always showed them to have really bad quality (the camera uses the embeded JPG for picture review to save processing).

If you don't believe me you can check yourself. open a pre 1.04 RAW file in a hex editor (if you don't have one use google to find one). Go to about halfway through the file to ensure your not looking at the header data (exif, emedded JPG etc). You will see number that look like this

02 FA 03 45 0A 56

Notice how every second number always has a leading 0 that is because this is the unused portion so the only valid data is the 3 nibbles which represent 4-bits each for 12-bits in total. To store 14-bits you would need a 1 or 2 in place every now and then.

The full raw data is 5632x3720 and at 2 bytes a pixel this comes to 41,902,080 bytes which is the majority of the raw's size. Note only 5530x3694 is image data the rest is covered parts of the sensor which Samsung does seem to be using to store some data.

A very intresting tidbit is that the pixel values are stored in little endian (intel style) so in the above figures the 03 is the MSB and the FA is the LSB. That's very unsusual with consumer electronics and the opposite to the NX100.