rjriggins11 Loc: Colorado Springs, CO

Actually, RAW format does render a pixel by pixel rendering. It also records a correlation of each pixel to each other and does it in a binary format.

R.G. Loc: Scotland

I don't know who to believe, because I've seen others state that the pixels in a RAW-derived image don't have a direct equivalent on the sensor - and that applies to their position as well as to their colour/luminosity values.

SonnyE Loc: Communist California, USA

Back in the Dawn of Digital camera's for general public consumption...
It was quite apparent that red was a file size culprit. Any file with a lot of red in it was noticeably larger.
Flash forward to today...
Today, one picture can hold more information than some of the early cameras could hold in their entire memory. (40-50 small jpg's and you had to find a terminal to empty the camera. Life wasn't pretty.) Casio Pocket Camera, 1 MP, 640x480 pixel images. Yes, crude.
Things have improved a bit.

Every thing got physically smaller, but files have grown exponentially. And just like the computer industry, bigger, faster, and larger numbers, are all used to drag out the wallets and cards of hungry tech savvy :hunf: :?: public.

Is the file... what? Who cares? It is what it is.
You are light years away from 20 years ago. And 20 years from now Pictures will likely be taken with thought and downloaded with hat full of sensors on your head.

Try and not over-think things. ;)

oldtigger Loc: Roanoke Virginia-USA

the sensor data is compressed, expanded, dithered and diddled long before it gets modified and stored as a raw file.
Straight sensor data just isn't pretty enough from an engineering standpoint to be stored without first processing it.

R.G. Loc: Scotland

I've heard of dithering as a technique - diddling must be something new that I haven't heard of yet :-D .

drucker Loc: Oregon

As mentioned in several comments, the camera sensor density isn't a 1:1 ratio to the output file because several variables come into play. At the most simple level each sensor would only record black or white and each sensor could be recorded by one bit (0 or 1 [off/on] in computer terms). But we aren't satisfied with that we want shades of grey 8-16-32-64-128-etc.
Here we encounter how the computer stores information -- each byte is composed of 8 bits and 256 levels can be described per byte. But we are not satisfied with that – we want color, and that usually means three (RGB) and the full raw file size in bytes just tripled the number of cells on your camera sensor plus the file header that stores information about the photo.
Physically handling this huge amount of information is possible but we are impatient creatures and want it done instantly. Thus, camera makers use various systems to compress the file without losing any information. For example if a string eight sensors report the same color value then the file can say "repeat this value eight times" using fewer bytes than repeating the complete information eight times. Multiply this many thousands of time in a file and the space savings can be significant. All of the information is still there, but it just takes up less space and is faster to process but is still a lossless format.
This is in contrast to JPEG files where adjacent pixels are analyzed based on the quality level chosen and are permanently changed to an average color that can then be stored in a more compact form making the final file size much smaller.
The debate will go on about which system to use and sensors will continue to increase in density but it all boils down to what level of quality is actually necessary for the final use rather than fostering what in many cases is just bragging rights.

jeep_daddy Loc: Prescott AZ

Megapixels and megabytes are different. Megapixels are the number of pixels an image has across and down, while megabytes is the size of the file according to how much data is in the file which is affected by the type of file, (raw/jpg), bit-depth (8-bit, 16-bit, 24-bit etc), and so on.

speters Loc: Grangeville/Idaho

You probably end up with files over 15mb and not 15mp!

Kuzano

Quality of focus also affects file byte size....

If you mount your camera to a tripod and set manual functions, aperture, shutter, ISO all to the same settings and set the focal distance point to be identical and shoot four shots of the same subject (NO CHANGE) at the settings chosen, you can get four different file storage sizes, whether Jpeg or RAW. This is also true on my DSLR that saves TIFF.

Change the focus for each shot, manually.. For the test do not use AF.

The image that will be the smallest byte size will be the image in best focus.

Taking one image in focus and purposely defocusing the other three will add bytes to the out of focus images. The image in best focus will always be the smallest file byte size.

I discovered this some years ago and often use the smallest file size as the best predictor of best focus.

Naturally, to make this a controlled test, testing relies on keeping the settings, subject content and exposure the same.

There is much confusion, and rightfully so, until the factors that control pixel count, pixel size, byte size and other components that control size are fully understood.

Some need to be understood and others are simply "mental masturbation"

Perhaps like file size related to accuracy of focus. Who Knows?

BY THE WAY my camera that writes jpeg, RAW and TIFF, creates TIFF as the largest byte size file... by a large margin over RAW. It's an Olympus DSLR. I have also used FUJIFILM DSLRS that create all three formats and TIFF is always considerably larger than RAW.

steffro1 Loc: Murrells Inlet, SC

You got that right, my D800 produces 44-47 MB per image!

Kuzano

What size file is created by "50 shades of Grey". Furthermore, do we really give a big rat's A__!!

Architect1776 Loc: In my mind

Many good answers. Different subjects have different size files.

drucker Loc: Oregon

I thought about that when I mentioned "shades of grey" in my post, but decided not to go there — it takes too many megabytes!

Armadillo Loc: Ventura, CA

No! But, a tiny Rat might make a difference.

Trabor

:thumbup: