RAW Immage Files Bit Depth List

[Andy Quinlan]

Dear Phil,

Can Exiftool  for RAW Images extract the Bit Depth Storage per Camera Model ?
Does 12 or 14 Bit Depth  really mean 12 or 14 Bits from a 16 Bit space as the Binary values are
1 Byte   8 Bits
2 Bytes 16 Bits  etc

I am aware that all JPEGs are 8 Bit.

From Website Below I get following information :

Re: Bit depth for 5D Mark2 and 5D Mark3?
On Canon when shooting "RAW" you get 14 bit depth (.CR2 files)
On Nikon I think you can choose to use either 12-bit or 14-bit for your .NEF files.

http://community.usa.canon.com/t5/EOS/Bit-depth-for-5D-Mark2-and-5D-Mark3/td-p/106657

Kind regards
Andy
 

[Hayo Baan]

Yes, exiftool can tell you the bit depth for most if not all supported raw files. And yes, 12 or 14 bits really means 12 or 14 bits. Note though that these bits are packed in a different way than byte by byte so internally they aren't (necessarily) represented by two bytes

[Andy Quinlan]

Hello Hayo,

Thanks for your reply,

Can you give me the Exiftool command and parameters to extract "Bit depth" from my images.

Thanking you.

Andy

[StarGeek]

Try
exiftool -BitsPerSample FileOrDir

But you have to be careful as results can be inconsistent.  For example, on the NEF file I just checked had this output with -a option:

Code Select Expand

[IFD0]          BitsPerSample                   : 8 8 8
[SubIFD1]       BitsPerSample                   : 14

The SubIFD1 was the default without the show duplicate option, but I wouldn't know if that would always be the default.

[Andy Quinlan]

Hi StarGeek,

Thanks for your reply.

I guess the 8 8 8  is for RGB     as in Color Space.

Kind regards
Andy

[Hayo Baan]

The 8 8 8 is indeed the bit depths of the three RGB channels (of the embedded JPG preview).

Hope this clarifies things completely

[Andy Quinlan]

Hello Hayo,

Thanks for reply.
I have created  a new Format file to extract The Tonal range & Image Quality. (Attached)

Kind regards
Andy   

[Hayo Baan]

Nice, looks good! I had never used FMT files myself before, but they are in fact quite powerful

[Phil Harvey]

Nice use of the FMT file feature.

- Phil