However, all A7 series cameras, including the A7 II come with a pretty disappointing limitation – they are unable to provide uncompressed or lossless 14-bit RAW data. To keep RAW files smaller, Sony decided to employ lossy compression, which is basically 11-bit of base data, plus 7-bit of delta offset, as detailed in this article by our friends at RawDigger. What does this mean? Well, to put it short, Sony is basically handicapping the potential of the A7 cameras by using lossy compression on RAW files. It is like buying a sports car that could potentially reach 200 mph top speed, but cannot go beyond 150 mph due to having a limiter in place. Nikon at least gives you an option to choose between uncompressed, lossless and lossy compression via the camera menu system, but Sony has no such options, so you are pretty much locked with the 11+7 bit lossy RAW files. In the next section, I will talk about the effect of the 11+7 bit RAW files on images in detail.