What are NEF RAW files?
Progress from JPEGs and get more editing flexibility, more colours and more detail with Nikon’s proprietary RAW image format
Your Nikon camera can take stills in two main formats – JPEG and RAW. JPEG (which stands for Joint Photographic Experts Group) is a universal format introduced in 1992 that balances image quality with file size. This creates photos that are a great size for using on the internet, but lose quality through the compression process that creates them. RAW files, however, contain all the unprocessed data that hits the camera sensor, giving you files that take up more storage space but offer a much greater ability to edit images.
What’s in our kitbag?
RAW to the rescue
Although JPEG is a universal format, RAW (which doesn’t stand for anything – it just means raw and unprocessed) is not, and each camera manufacturer has its own proprietary format. For Nikon this is NEF RAW, which stands for Nikon Electronic Format. You can only actually ‘see’ RAW files in editing software, such as Lightroom or Nikon’s NX Studio, where you can use all the data they contain to create greater contrasts between light and shade and allow you to rescue images that might have been under- or overexposed.
RAW equals more colour
Because of the information stored in a RAW file, you also have access to many more colours. A JPEG is recorded in 8-bit, which means it can use up to 16 million colour shades, which is a lot until you realise that RAW 12-bit can utilise 68 billion shades and 14-bit (if available on your camera) up to 4.3 trillion!
The other bonus of working with RAW files is that the editing process is non-destructive. Every step is reversible and, when you convert your final edit into a JPEG or TIFF, the original RAW file remains in your library.
Head to the Image Quality menu to select how the camera records your frames.
Setting up your Nikon with NEF RAW
You can choose to record images as JPEG only, RAW only or RAW + JPEG. If you’re going to be editing your pictures but also might want to quickly send images from your camera to your feed, taking both RAW and JPEG at the same time is a good option. This way you have a copy of each format. And even if you’re a beginner and don’t do much editing at the moment, it might be a good idea to have RAW versions of your images for the future.
Choose your compression
You can also choose between three ways of compressing your NEF RAW files. These are Lossless compression, which records all the information, High Efficiency*, which produces images close in quality to Lossless compression but in a smaller file, and High Efficiency, which creates the smallest file size but loses a little quality. Which one you choose to use will depend on what sort of images you’re taking. For example, if you’re at a fast moving event such as sports and are using burst mode, you may want to use High Efficiency or High Efficiency* as the smaller files will buffer faster.
To choose which compression to use, open the camera menu, go to Photo Shooting Menu and scroll down to RAW recording. Press OK and this will give you the options. Choose the one you want to set the camera to and then press the shutter button to exit.
Now you’re all set with NEF RAW and can take more control over your images.
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