pfinfante
Member
Are you shooting 12 or 14 bit and why or why not?
12 or 14 Bit
- Thread starter pfinfante
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Palouse
Well-known member
14.
I paid for it.
Storage is cheap.
I paid for it.
Storage is cheap.
JANuser
Active member
14bit. I shoot RAW images to get the best image quality possible, so why compromise that by shooting 12bit?
Graham Clark
gc-graphs
14 bit for me too.
Calson
Well-known member
It depends on the subject or scene. For wildlife in general I use 12-bit as it makes for a 15-20 percent smaller file to work with in post. A D850 14-bit file out of the camera is about 55MB but once converted to a TIFF it is more like 170MB and even with a super fast computer there are noticeable lags. There is also the matter of how much IQ is going to be affected if shooting at an ISO setting greater than 400 with the resulting loss of dynamic range that occurs. I see a difference between photographing a landscape at ISO 100 and shooting BIF at ISO 3200.
Color and tonality are more important with yellows and reds in my own experience and so with fall colors in a shot the 14-bit might provide a better image, though not likely to make for a better print. For people in a marketplace a 12-bit Raw file is not going to sacrifice anything. There is however a great deal of variation between how different cameras will render the same scene. Canon cameras produce very different colors and tonality than Nikon cameras and which is better is subjective as with most areas of photography.
Color and tonality are more important with yellows and reds in my own experience and so with fall colors in a shot the 14-bit might provide a better image, though not likely to make for a better print. For people in a marketplace a 12-bit Raw file is not going to sacrifice anything. There is however a great deal of variation between how different cameras will render the same scene. Canon cameras produce very different colors and tonality than Nikon cameras and which is better is subjective as with most areas of photography.
It depends. 12 vs 14 bit is mostly about deep shadows and higher dynamic range shots. And ISO 
When you're somewhere between base ISO and ISO 400 ~ 800, you can see a difference in the shadows if you really pull them (I'm going to do a video on this one day). However, as you pass ISO 400 and start getting towards ISO 800, the detail in the heavy shadow regions is lost due to noise either way. The 14 bit noise still looks "nicer", but the detail is still lost. So, if I want to save space or get a bit more out of my buffer, I'll often sketch to 12bit once I'm above ISO 400. (Another way to think of it is that you don't need 14 bit to hold the dynamic range of ISO 400 ~ 800 + .)
Also, we're talking HARD shadow pulls here. In the vast majority of photographs, you'd never need to pull them hard enough to see any difference between 12 and 14 bit.
When you're somewhere between base ISO and ISO 400 ~ 800, you can see a difference in the shadows if you really pull them (I'm going to do a video on this one day). However, as you pass ISO 400 and start getting towards ISO 800, the detail in the heavy shadow regions is lost due to noise either way. The 14 bit noise still looks "nicer", but the detail is still lost. So, if I want to save space or get a bit more out of my buffer, I'll often sketch to 12bit once I'm above ISO 400. (Another way to think of it is that you don't need 14 bit to hold the dynamic range of ISO 400 ~ 800 + .)
Also, we're talking HARD shadow pulls here. In the vast majority of photographs, you'd never need to pull them hard enough to see any difference between 12 and 14 bit.