JPEG quality in Nikon 60 camera

I recently migrated my photos from my old Mac to my new Windows desktop. The migration was a bit of a pain, in part because I had 30GB of photo files to migrate. Most of those 40GB were photos from the past two years.
Looking ahead, this pattern is unsustainable. I need a smaller photo library.

There are a few general approaches to shrinking the library:

1. Fewer photos
2. Smaller photo files.
1. Fewer megapixels
2. Tighter (JPEG) compression.

I am now employing a mix of methods. This post discusses an approach to Smaller photo files through tighter compression. Ken Rockwell has an excellent article on his excellent site, that should convince you that you do not need "RAW" or "JPEG Fine" or "JPEG Super-fine" files from your DSLR camera. I'll just add that lenses and lighting will do far more to your photo quality than (non-)compression.

All you really need to know is, as Ken says: "For Nikon cameras without the Optimal Image Quality JPG mode (D1X, D70, D50, D100) I use NORMAL JPG.

I have a Nikon D60. (Thanks, Dan and Lucy!)  The Nikon D60 offers four photo storage quality modes. I took some test photos to decode their meaning. Here is what they are called and what they mean:

Name	Quality	bits per pixel	Relative File size	Subjective quality loss
NEF (RAW)	100		200% – 400% (10 MB)
JPEG Fine	98	4	100% (2-4 MB)	None
JPEG Normal	97	2	70% (1-2 MB)	None
JPEG Basic	75	1	20% (0.4 - 0.8 MB)	Trivial
NEF (RAW) + JPEG Basic			stores two files

Conclusion: Unless you are taking photos under perfectly lit conditions with perfect focus, optical error is going to dominate picture quality, not JPEG compression.

Recommendation: Use JPEG Basic (or Normal if you are paranoid) for day-to-day shooting outside of a studio.

I will update this post with more sample photos and analysis, some time….