Nikon Capture

[RedBaron]

I haven't gotten around to purchasing the software yet. Traveling to much for work. I did play with the trial version which as expired now.

I set my D50 to take pics in NEF+JPEG Basic. The NEF pic was around 5 megs in size. When I used the Nikon Capture sofware I then saved the pic in a JPEG file. The saved file was around 1.5 megs in size. Did I do something that saved it in such a small file or is that normal?

In Capture can you save it to any size file you want? For example I might want to save a pic to small file to email like 57k (my old Sony DSCS70 would save them that small).

Thanks,
Richard

[erichlund]

I haven't gotten around to purchasing the software yet. Traveling to much for work. I did play with the trial version which as expired now.

I set my D50 to take pics in NEF+JPEG Basic. The NEF pic was around 5 megs in size. When I used the Nikon Capture sofware I then saved the pic in a JPEG file. The saved file was around 1.5 megs in size. Did I do something that saved it in such a small file or is that normal?

In Capture can you save it to any size file you want? For example I might want to save a pic to small file to email like 57k (my old Sony DSCS70 would save them that small).

Thanks,
Richard
NEF is a raw format where the raw sensor data is in one part of the file and the camera settings are in another part. On the D50, the raw data is compressed once at file creation time, but never again. When you manipulate the image in capture, you are manipulating the camera settings, so you do not have any effect on the actual sensor data. There are some features where this is not entirely true, but I think you get the idea.

When you save a file as jpg in the camera or convert it to jpg in Capture, you are converting the file to a different format. All the camera settings are applied to the raw image data, and a single, unified, and higly compressed, file is created. This last part is why jpg files are much smaller than raw files. Another weakness of jpg is that each time you load, alter and save, the file is opened up and recompressed. This means the image degrades just a bit each time.

So, you want to think of your NEF file as your negative. Always try to keep the original NEF exactly as it came out of the camera, and you will always have your original starting point in the best possible format.

As to saving for special uses, yes, you save in jpg to specific file sizes and compression levels. This can give you very responsive, small file sizes, but the images are pretty useless outside of internet display, and are not very valueable for critical photo evaluation. Actually, I haven't tried doing this in capture. I usually downsize photos in Paint Shop Pro, but I am assuming it's possible.

[RedBaron]

Thank you for the information.