NEF lossless vs. uncompressed vs. Capture NX

[greg_lisi]

<p>Hi all...Went to a camera club meeting for the first time to see if I wanted to join. Towards the end of the meetinng, I listened to a heated discussion that ensued after someone mentioned the use of his D3 with NEF uncompressed vs. lossless compressed. The meat of the argument focused on the few claiming lossless compressed would only be true lossless if using NEF proprietary S/W (ViewNX or Capture NX). Using a 3rd party editor would not be lossless. The opposite side was arguing something about no loss of data with 3rd party..etc., etc. I don't really know. Since voices were becoming a bit high on the decibel scale, I decided to withdraw to the parking lot and exit. Since I'm constantly on a learning curve, your input is appreciated. </p>

[Wouter Willemse]

<p>As far as I know, the editor has got little to do with it at all. The setting affects the in-camera compression of the RAW data inside the NEF file. Once the file comes out of the camera, it has a given size (in megabytes) depending on the compression chosen. Afterwards, the editor reads the file. Theoretically, an editor could fail to read a file with one of the types of compression because the editor does not support unpacking that data. But in the real world, all editors seem fine with any level of compression.<br>

The tricky part, however, is in the definition of "lossless". It's visually lossless, so the when the file is handled well by the editor, there ought to be no visible differences due to decompression of data. And I belief this is the case; the compression algorithms Nikon uses sure aren't wizardry and something very specific, so I severly doubt that any difference in image quality can in fact be attributed to the decompression of compressed NEF data.</p>

[howard_m]

<p>there are 3 flavors... uncompressed, lossless compressed and lossy.</p>

<p>It has NOTHING to do w/ any editing and all about the way the camera packs the bits. Lossless is exactly that and NOTHING is lost. There is no good reason to use uncompressed. The Lossy compression does throw away some useful data but in 99.8% of the cases, it's not observable.</p>

<p>http://regex.info/blog/photo-tech/nef-compression</p>

[walterh]

<p>This is a new version of "only Nikon software can get the best out of Nikon images".<br>

Always fun to read but do not believe it.<br>

Inside of NEF files pixel data are stored very similar to TIF files and almost anybody can read the image data.</p>

[ShunCheung]

Lossless compress means you can completely recover the original info, 100% of it. If a third party knows how to

decompress from Nikon's compression, I wonder why it is not 100%.

[wogears]

<blockquote>

<p>Hi all...Went to a camera club meeting for the first time to see if I wanted to join.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>I don't think you do. The argument you describe is essentially meaningless. I thought camera clubs talked about photography.</p>

[ShunCheung]

<p>I totally agree that the "argument" as described is a completely meaningless one. Even for lossy compression, Nikon has chosen to compress the highlight area such that any difference is not visible to human vision. A number of studies have carefully compared lossy compressed NEF against uncompressed NEF. I have done some very careful comparison as well. My conclusion is that I cannot see the difference in most of not all situations.</p>

<p>On the D300 and D700, I typically shoot lossless compressed, but on the D7000, I usually shoot (lossy) compressed so that my NEF file sizes are smaller to partially compensate for the D7000 slow memory card write speed onto SD cards. I would not shoot lossy compressed if I think I am losing quality from my NEF files in any meaningful manner.</p>

<p>I hope that the OP merely went to that camera club meeting on a wrong day. I would suggest going there a couple more times. If they indeed get into such silly debates on a regular basis, I would find a better place.</p>

<p>Unfortunately, here on photo.net forums, there are plenty of such silly debates as well. I guess some of that is human nature. But I too would like to foucs our effort to becoming better photographers.</p>

[greg_lisi]

<p>Thank you for your input. Again, learning all phases of digital imaging is a big part of what I enjoy. There is one thing that makes this topic interesting to me. After reading your coments, I called the head-cheese of the camera club for some membership details. I come to find out the group that was debating this issue were not exactly "newbies" to the DSLR world. Like, I'm talking (average ages 50ish) software engineers, systems anaylists, working for blue chip companies who have been seriously shooting Nikon digital since the D1 days. When I hear input here like "meaningless, silly," etc. it makes me scratch my head as to the members' credibility. One would think they would have at least more of a handle on data manipulation. Your input certainly makes clear to me the core of what I was trying to understand. The only thing I can think of is, the club president explained, when die-hard NX users vs. LR, PS, Capture One users start getting into it..WOW!</p>

[wogears]

<blockquote>

<p>The only thing I can think of is, the club president explained, when die-hard NX users vs. LR, PS, Capture One users start getting into it..WOW!</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Honestly, this gives me the shakes. Do they talk about photography? Are there pictures on display at the meetings? I never liked the 'camera club' aesthetic, but at least they used to show prints and slideshows at their meetings. I strongly recommend you stay AWAY from the gear and software junkies. You can waste years with all this nonsense.</p>

[ShunCheung]

<p>Greg, what is your objective to join a camera club? If you want to improve your photography, Les Berkley is exactly right. Do they discuss and critique images during their meetings? Can the club president direct you to (on-line) portfolios from their key members?</p>

<p>On the other hand, a setting where people make no real critiques, and every mediocre image is praised to no end so that everybody feels good, is not exactly going to help you improve as a photographer.</p>

<p>Unfortunately, there are already plenty of opportunities to waste lots of time debating about gear, etc. here on the photo.net. At least on photo.net, if you are not interested, you can always move onto another thread or another web site. You are not kind of captive in a room such that it is not easy to escape.</p>

[Wouter Willemse]

<blockquote>

<p>The only thing I can think of is, the club president explained, when die-hard NX users vs. LR, PS, Capture One users start getting into it..WOW!</p>

</blockquote>

<p>I'd be out of there, personally. I do not believe that an image gets ruined or made due to the software I used to brush it up a bit....</p>

[greg_lisi]

<p>Thanks guys. I apologize if it sounded like I was stretching this topic beyond it's intended purpose. Shun, my ultimate objective is to learn. I was hoping to find a camera club where various levels of photographic skills could be expanded. This particular club is too far over my head. I'm not a beginner, but I'm not an engineer (many of those members are). Some of the jargon they were discussing made my head spin. I'll stck with reading online here at photo.net and checking out YouTube which has some pretty good tutorials if you know where to look. <br>

 

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</p>

[ShunCheung]

<blockquote>

<p>This particular club is too far over my head.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Greg, I happen to have two graduate degrees in computer science and a software engineer by profession. However, you don't need to know anything about how Nikon compresses it NEF files to be a great photographer. In particular, in my experience, the tiny bit of loss in lossy NEF compression is not worth spending time to discuss. If that is the focus for that club, I am afraid that a lot of them are non-photographers and is a waste of time. However, you might have caught them in an unusual day. I don't think it is fair to judge them after just one meeting.</p>

[rodeo_joe1]

<p>I can only echo some of what's already been said; that lossy compression has absolutely ZILCH to do with what image editor is used to open it. The "loss" occurs during compression <em>in the camera</em> and can't be recovered by any software.</p>

<p>I must admit that I don't know enough about Nikon's compression algorithms to say exactly what gets thrown away in their lossy compression, but it's probably unused highlight headroom or unused zero bits in the 14 bit colour digitisation. The compression may utilise a reduced colour pallette, since it's obviously not possible to represent all 4.4 trillion possible 14 bit colours in a 12 or 16 million pixel picture. Whatever it is that's thrown away, I'm pretty sure it won't be noticed by the great majority of users and I'm also pretty sure that the recovered NEF files will still be miles better than JPEGS.</p>

<p>Yes, sometimes debates get out of hand in clubs where people have a common interest. In fact Photo.net itself isn't immune from heated and sometimes ill-informed argument [strikethrough] - ermm, I mean debate.</p>

<p>I'd give the club another chance and see if there's anyone there who wants to talk about composition, lighting techniques or, radical suggestion, pictures in general.</p>

[ian_gordon_bilson]

<p>If you,by some lucky chance,have happened upon a Camera Club which is concerned with Photography,you are a fortunate individual indeed.<br>

If the members are obsessed with equipment status symbols and pixel-counting,they will be fairly representative of all the CC's I have ever encountered, and you will be far better off keeping your own counsel , and using this, and other forums,to advance your abilities.</p>