what file format to use.

[wesley762]

most all of my digital camera have only been one or two formats. well i have noticed with my new 5400 there are a few diffrent formats is one better than the other.

[Suhit Gupta]

Do you mean in terms of cameras storing files after taking pictures? Most common are JPG and RAW images. Are those the two you are thinking of?

Suhit

[Suhit Gupta]

Do you mean the JPEG, NEF and TIFF options? I didn't know the 5400 had NEF.

Merging threads...

[wesley762]

well I did notice that my 5400 could do jpeg and tiff. is one going to be better. up till now I have done everything in jpeg but I did notice when setting it to tiff the files where about 30 meg. is there a quality diffrence. it would give me a excuses to get a one gig card hehe. but really am I going to see a diffrence?

[Lee Yuan Sheng]

TIFF is pointless. Use JPEG.

[wesley762]

could you go into a little more detail why? I would like to understand the difference between the two. I know that jpeg is alot smaller file and more easily opened in different programs but besides that I don't really know the differences.

[Jason Dunn]

TIFFs aren't compressed, meaning there's no quality lost when the file is saved.

JPEGs are compressed, meaning quality is lost when the file is saved.

The reality is, however, that JPEGs saved at maximum quality have very little quality loss - it's really not worth the extra file size to go TIFF.

RAW is a different story though - the files are bigger, but you end up with more data to work with than a JPEG. Not all cameras have RAW mode.

[Suhit Gupta]

TIFF is pointless. Use JPEG.
TIFF is pointless? A bit strong, don't you think? Any reasons in particular...

Suhit

[Suhit Gupta]

The reality is, however, that JPEGs saved at maximum quality have very little quality loss - it's really not worth the extra file size to go TIFF.
I don't know whether I would agree with this in all cases. Sometimes JPG compression just doesn't cut it and RAW may be the way to go, although browsers don't directly support RAW so TIFF is often a good alternative.

Suhit

[Jason Dunn]

I don't know whether I would agree with this in all cases. Sometimes JPG compression just doesn't cut it and RAW may be the way to go

He didn't mention RAW, so my assumption is that it's not an option.

[James Fee]

Well since the 5400 doesn't currently support RAW format it isn't an issue, though I have read a firmware upgrade is in the works to give it NEF RAW format.