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Hi everyone
New member here, I had a D70 for six months and have only been shooting in JEPG. I just wanted to know the dos and don'ts of NEF format
thing like storage , software needed ,can photo shops print NEF files or do you change format. Pretty much everything there is to know . Any help would be great.

Maca, I used to use jpeg now I use nef (raw) exclusively. On the d70 whereas a typical jpeg might take up 2MB in jpeg fine large or whatever it's called, it'll take about 6MB in nef. So about 1 third to 1 half shots will fill your card.

Best advantage IMHO is if you stuff up the exposure or white balance you have a good chance of fixing it if it's nef. Bit harder if its jpeg. This is quite important for me as I'm only learning.

I use Photoshop CS2. It has Adobe Bridge with it that imports the nef into PS CS2. Once in there you save it as PSD to work on it and as jpeg when you want to print it or post it.

Best thing is to try it out and see. Films cheap.

I shoot NEFs only cos my mum told me if I shoot jpegs, my gears will be confiscated and she gave me monies to buy 4gb CF cards

maca wrote:Hi everyone
New member here, I had a D70 for six months and have only been shooting in JEPG. I just wanted to know the dos and don'ts of NEF format
thing like storage , software needed ,can photo shops print NEF files or do you change format. Pretty much everything there is to know . Any help would be great.

Maca, I misread your question. To print, a photo shop will want the image in jpeg. I'm pretty sure they won't be able to print directly from a nef. I thought you were asking if Adobe PhotoShop could print nef's. Sorry about the confusion.

RAW images, with their rich data depth, give you much more to work with during conversion and subsequent image editing. In addition, RAW files are more forgiving if you need to recover highlight detail.

The following table, which assumes a five-stop dynamic range, illustrates the difference in richness between a RAW image and a JPEG image.

A Comparison of Brightness Levels

Brightness Levels Available

12-bit RAW Capture /8-bit JPEG File
First f-stop (brightest tones) 2,048 / 69
Second f-stop (bright tones) 1,024 / 50
Third f-stop (midtones) 512 / 37
Fourth f-stop (dark tones) 256 / 27
Fifth f-stop (darkest tones) 128 / 20


There are a couple of important take-aways from this table. First, it shows that capturing that first stop of data provides fully half of the entire data. This means that a very slight overexposure with digital capture ensures that the camera will capture the large amount of data contained in the first f-stop. And second, the table illustrates how much more data you have to work with in a RAW capture than with a JPEG file.