Lots of confusion here! Lets to through your post and de-confuse what it says. You'll have to tell us what you actually meant, and then make decisions and choices from what is available.
rtcary wrote:
I am an owner of a Nikon D810 and most of my event images do not need 36 MB resolution, so I decided to try the small RAW setting.
Take a look in the User Manual, on page 474, to see what that means. I assume you really did mean "resolution", and hence that should be 36
MP, or Mega Pixels, not MB for Mega Bytes (a file's size rather than resolution). The manual lists NEF (RAW) files as "small size available (12-bit uncompressed only).
So you'll only get 12-bit raw sensor data, rather than 14-bit. For event photography, where dynamic range is often important, you might not like that.
On page 489 it lists NEF (RAW) Uncompressed, 12-bit files to average 27.9 MB. For comparison, NEF (RAW), Lossless compressed, 12-bit files average 31.9 MB, while 14-bit Lossless would be 40.7 MB. Note that all of that is file
size not image pixel resolution.
On page 85 the manual says that "RAW S Small" images "are about half the size" of the Large images, and that refers to pixel dimensions. It seems the images are about 9 MP, so they must mean half the width and half the height, or 1/4 the number of pixels.
rtcary wrote:
The menu says that large RAW is 36 MP and small is 9 MP, however the small actually average around 29 MB files.
What am I missing? Or is really 3 X 9 due to the three pixels needed for re, green and blue?
Todd
What you seem to have missed (hold onto your hat), is that it's all a marketing gimmick! This file type is something Kodak came up with years ago when memory cards where smaller and a GB was much more expensive. Canon started using it a few years ago (they are big on marketing). Nikon finally gave in and added it just because Canon has it.
It's worthless.It eats batteries faster, and slows the camera down while it processes. The file size advantage is small. The loss of image data is great.
For event photography you probably want to use 14-bit NEF lossless compression. If you need
immediate results for onsite sales, shoot NEF+JPEG, and set the JPEG size as needed. For fine art production, process the NEF file as needed.