Digital Camera File Formats   

The advent of the Digital Cameras has done away with the need for chemical developing. Pictures are now stored on a micro chip on a memory card within the Camera. The format that this information or data is stored can differ according to the level of your cameras technology. With more expensive models comes better technology with more options for the formats that are available which in turn provide more flexibility and quality to the raw data which should produce much better pictures.

Basically, there are three file formats used by digital cameras to create images of photographs taken by them. These are

a)       JPEG,

b)       TIFF ,

c)       RAW.

The most commonly used file format for digital cameras is the JPEG file format. It is the main file format available on primary and some intermediate standard digital cameras. Many more sophisticated digital cameras allows the user to chose between JPEG, TIFF and RAW. However professional photographers usually prefer to shoot RAW. This is usually due to the ability to manipulate the picture in an almost infinite number of ways .

The acronym JPEG stands for “Joint Photographic Expert Group” – named after the group that developed this file type. JPEG is a compression technique that can reduce the file size of a photograph and other unremitting tone images. Almost all digital cameras have a number of JPEG compression levels and quality settings to select from. Therefore the JPEG images do not take up much space on a memory card. Another specialty of this digital camera file format is that JPEGs store camera settings and scene information. These advantages make this file format very popular and widely accepted.

The next digital camera file format is TIFF (Tagged Image File Format). This file format has the advantage that it does not lose any image file information when compressed and as a consequence it does take up a lot of space from a memory card in comparison to a JPEG image. Due to this detailed storage it also takes more time to retrieve the information from the memory card. Basically the TIFF compression reduces images to about one-third it’s original size.

The final digital camera file format is the RAW file. It is really as near as can get to a Negative in the Digital Photography world. Most advanced digital cameras allow or permit the ability to shoot RAW in professional standards. With a RAW image no alterations are made by the camera (such as sharpening or white balance), this therefore gives entire control to the photographer when he or she processes an image later. However, the RAW file format is not used a much as the other formats due to the fact that few image editors support this format and computer-processing time and Memory space  is also increased. However, a RAW image has a smaller file size than a TIFF.

It is clear that the three most widely accepted file formats have their own advantages and disadvantages, yet they are unique in some way or the other that makes them special in their own manner. The knowledge about these digital camera file formats of storage not only yields greater understanding of the camera; it also opens the eyes towards the fantastic results of technological advancements in our daily lives.

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