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# of images in RAW mode

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Ronald Hirsch130257

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I haven't really used RAW mode since I got my 14n, so I thought I'd give it a whirl.

I set the camera for RAW only, and 13.5 MP. The resulting file size was 12.5 MB. This is smaller than I thought it would be. That many MP at 24 bits per MP comes out to just over 40 MB. Obviously there is some compression used.

I have a 512 MB Compact Flash card in the camera, and the number of images which I can take showing in the lower LCD display is 29 when the card is freshly formatted.

29 times 12.5 is 362.5 MB. What happened to the rest of the storage space? I must be missing something.

If I set the camera to JPEG at 13.5 MP, the display shows 104 images can be stored. I assume that the camera is saving the images at the best quality jpg level, and of course compression is being used here.

There appears to be some overhead involved in RAW that I don't quite understand.

I didn't spot anything to explain this to me in the manual, which I printed out.

Ron Hirsch
 
Ronald

RAW isn't 24bits per pixel (that's converted tiff). Raw is 12 bits per pixel (remember this is raw data, so single colour only prior to conversion).

There has been some discussion that this is compressed down to 10 bits but I don't know anything about the ins and outs of Kodak's storage method.
Ronald Hirsch said:
I haven't really used RAW mode since I got my 14n, so I thought I'd
give it a whirl.

I set the camera for RAW only, and 13.5 MP. The resulting file size
was 12.5 MB. This is smaller than I thought it would be. That many
MP at 24 bits per MP comes out to just over 40 MB. Obviously there
is some compression used.

I have a 512 MB Compact Flash card in the camera, and the number of
images which I can take showing in the lower LCD display is 29 when
the card is freshly formatted.

29 times 12.5 is 362.5 MB. What happened to the rest of the storage
space? I must be missing something.

If I set the camera to JPEG at 13.5 MP, the display shows 104
images can be stored. I assume that the camera is saving the images
at the best quality jpg level, and of course compression is being
used here.

There appears to be some overhead involved in RAW that I don't
quite understand.

I didn't spot anything to explain this to me in the manual, which I
printed out.

Ron Hirsch
Click to expand...
 
DMillier said:
RAW isn't 24bits per pixel (that's converted tiff). Raw is 12 bits
per pixel (remember this is raw data, so single colour only prior
to conversion).

There has been some discussion that this is compressed down to 10
bits but I don't know anything about the ins and outs of Kodak's
storage method.
Click to expand...
Kodak understandably does not want to reveal the details of their proprietary compression methods, but they have said they use a "visually" lossless transformation to compress each pixel down to 10 bits. In additition, there is some form of compression that operated across pixels, so that highly detailed images require more space than smooth images. My RAW files vary from about 8 to 20 megabytes depending on the amount of detail.

So when the camera tells you how many more shots will fit on the card, it has to guess how big those files will be. I don't know how it guesses, but it seems to be close enough for most practical purposes.
 
Ronald Hirsch said:
I haven't really used RAW mode since I got my 14n, so I thought I'd
give it a whirl.

I set the camera for RAW only, and 13.5 MP. The resulting file size
was 12.5 MB. This is smaller than I thought it would be. That many
MP at 24 bits per MP comes out to just over 40 MB. Obviously there
is some compression used.

I have a 512 MB Compact Flash card in the camera, and the number of
images which I can take showing in the lower LCD display is 29 when
the card is freshly formatted.

29 times 12.5 is 362.5 MB. What happened to the rest of the storage
space? I must be missing something.

If I set the camera to JPEG at 13.5 MP, the display shows 104
images can be stored. I assume that the camera is saving the images
at the best quality jpg level, and of course compression is being
used here.

There appears to be some overhead involved in RAW that I don't
quite understand.

I didn't spot anything to explain this to me in the manual, which I
printed out.

Ron Hirsch
Click to expand...
Hi Ron:

A RAW file is indeed highly compressed, but it is not lossy compression like JPG. The frame counter on the 14n is just an estimate of how many images you can store on the flash card since the camera does not know beforehand how much it can compress each RAW file.

I always use raw and my raw files run in size from 12,000KB to 16,800KB depending on how much detail is in the image. A typical sunset is in the 12,000KB range, while a highly detailed landscape image can reach 16,800KB. So your RAW image(s) are able to be highly compressed - you will see larger RAW files when you start taking more in the RAW format. When you convert the RAW file to a TIF in PhotoDesk it will produce a 39,744KB uncompressed file for each RAW file you convert to uncompressed TIF.

As far as the overhead and wasted space on the card that is the result of the way the card is formatted. The card uses a minimum cluster size and any file stored is broken up into clusters. The last cluster is almost never an exact fit, so any space left in the last cluster is wasted. This can amount to a lot of empty space on the card.
--
leicaIIIf
 
Ronald Hirsch said:
Thanks for all the info.

I use Photoshop CS, with the latest updates. Is there any reason to
stick with PhotoDesk as opposed to opening the RAW images in
Photoshop CS?

Ron
Click to expand...
Ron,

CS does abetter quality job, but PD is good for batch processing and renaming files. If I need to convert batches to jpg, I tend to use PD, I just set it going and go get a meal while it works. If PD could deal with moire in a more CS like fashion, it would be my program of choice.
That's what I have found, others will most certainly have other opinions.
Kevin.
 
Hi Ron,

I agree with Kevin. Speed and ease PD rules. Quality control on Moire, noise, CA, vingetting are all PS-CS. If I just want to quickly review files I use PD. If I am going to prepare the shots for sale I use PS-CS.

Regards

Paul
KAllen said:
Ronald Hirsch said:
Thanks for all the info.

I use Photoshop CS, with the latest updates. Is there any reason to
stick with PhotoDesk as opposed to opening the RAW images in
Photoshop CS?

Ron
Click to expand...
Ron,
CS does abetter quality job, but PD is good for batch processing
and renaming files. If I need to convert batches to jpg, I tend to
use PD, I just set it going and go get a meal while it works. If PD
could deal with moire in a more CS like fashion, it would be my
program of choice.
That's what I have found, others will most certainly have other
opinions.
Kevin.
Click to expand...
--
Paul R
 
Warren Sarle said:
It is lossy, but indeed not like JPG. Kodak claims that it is
"visually" lossless.
Click to expand...
Warren likes to harp about this but it really is visually lossless. The "loss" is a 12-to-10 bit conversion that is based on the characterstics of the imaging system and it preserves the color and tone of the image. The compression aglorithm used on the resulting 10 bit data is 100% lossless.

If you have compaints about the image quality of these cameras, this is almost certainly not the source of them.
 
I'm a member of NAPP, and recently there was a new (free for members) PS script written by Russell Brown of Adobe. It is directed at doing "batch" type processing on multiple files and the like. It comes with a movie tutorial, and from what I see, the window that the script provides runs circles around anythiing else for doing that work. And, it's very easy to understand everything he presents.

So, bottom line, I'll not bother with Kodak software. Integrating Brown's image processor script into Photoship puts it all together nicely.

Brown is a "character" but he's a real PS guru, and I've got a file folder full of his "free" movie tutorials. Now that he's doing PS scripts, things can get only better.

Ron Hirsch

++++++++++++++++++++
KAllen said:
Ron,
CS does abetter quality job, but PD is good for batch processing
and renaming files. If I need to convert batches to jpg, I tend to
use PD, I just set it going and go get a meal while it works. If PD
could deal with moire in a more CS like fashion, it would be my
program of choice.
That's what I have found, others will most certainly have other
opinions.
Kevin.
Click to expand...
 
"Dr. Brown's scripts" are very popular. Being a programmer, I write my own scripts. For anybody familiar with Javascript, Applescript, or VBA/VBScript, it's fairly easy. But I still use Photodesk for the close-up tool.
 
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