Wouldn’t a camera with a constant resolution capture images of the same quality and therefore file size? How is it possible that some images on my camera can be 1.5 MB, and others 2.5 MB?
In: Technology
What comes out of the sensor is called RAW file.
It is what the sensor sees.
Then, it is automatically transformed in a “corrected RAW” which include adjusting light (that’s one of the reason why pictures taken with less light are less sharp), and balancing white (believe it or not in your raw file a cloud can be blue or yellow or whatever).
This file is now fine for your eyes, but it’s a big file.
An algorithm will compress the file to a more convenient format, and then its stored. The most used compressed file is JPEG.
Even if the raw file are all big the same, during the compression similar pixels will be grouped together. some images will be compressed more than others, based on how ripetitive their pattern is, but we are talking of reducing the file size by 2-5 times.
All this steps are done automatically in you phone camera, while professionals cameras can save directly the RAW file so the photographer can personally adjust everything before compression (to avoid that the automatic compression may take some detail away)
Latest Answers