Photography I / Digital Capture and the Input-Output Chain
Practice question · Numerical answer

A 24-megapixel sensor records 14 bits at every photosite. How large is one uncompressed raw file, in megabytes, taking a megabyte as one million bytes?

Hints
  1. Multiply the number of photosites by the bits, then convert bits to bytes.
  2. 24 million times 14, divided by 8.
Show the answer

42 (answers within ±1 count)

Why

42 MB. 24 million photosites at 14 bits is 336 million bits, and dividing by 8 gives 42 million bytes. Note that this is one value per photosite, not three: a demosaiced 8-bit TIFF of the same picture is 72 MB and a 16-bit one is 144 MB.

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