A new sensor size roughly half way between the small sensors in point and shoot digital cameras and the much larger ones in digital SLRs and mirrorless cameras. It’s found in more advanced high-end compact cameras, and Nikon uses it for its Nikon 1 mirrorless cameras. It’s been adopted by a number of makers as […]
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1/2.3-inch sensor
This is the smallest sensor size in widespread use for photography. You’ll find it (or sensors of a similarly small size) in smartphones, point and shoot cameras and some bridge and long zoom travel cameras.
12-bit RAW
RAW files are captured at a greater ‘bit depth’ than regular JPEG images, which makes them much more resilient for editing later. Basic cameras tend to shoot 12-bit RAW files, which are adequate, but arguably not as good as the 14-bit RAW files captured by more advanced/professional cameras.
14-bit RAW
The ‘bit depth’ of RAW files is a factor in the picture quality they can produce, so this is a selling point for advanced digital cameras. Some cheaper models can only shoot 12-bit RAW files, but while this sounds like a small difference, the extra bit depth potentially offers 4x the image data so 14-bit […]
16-bit image
These are photos with 16 bits of data for each of the red, green and blue colour channels. These aren’t created directly by the camera, but you can generate 16-bit images from RAW files and they withstand heavy image manipulation better than regular 8-bit images. The file sizes are much larger, though, which puts more […]