V1.02
Thom Hogan’s Complete Guide to the Nikon D300
Page 136
8.
Use the Direction pad to navigate to the option you
wish to use (
Size priority
or
Optimal quality
).
This last bit (Steps 7 and 8) first appeared on the D2x and is
relatively new to Nikon DSLRs. You may think it’s another
way to set
JPEG fine
or
JPEG normal
. Not quite.
Remember, JPEG images are compressed and the
compression is variable. If you shoot something with a lot of
detail in it (and especially if you have settings active that
enhance acuity, such as sharpening), then the file size will be
noticeably larger with
Optimal quality
setting. When you
select
Size priority
, you force the JPEG engine to use cruder
compression on highly detailed images (partially overriding
your
Image quality
setting).
Alternatively,
Image quality
can be set by holding down the
QUAL
button on the top of the camera and rotating the Rear
Command dial;
Image size
can be set by holding down the
QUAL
button and rotating the Front Command dial (assumes
you haven’t used Custom Setting #F7 to change the dial
functions):
Top LCD (only one of the options is highlighted at time):
Let’s examine how the three JPEG options impact the look of
an image. Surprisingly, there’s not a very big penalty for using
the various JPEG settings. My overall test scene looks like this:
