[beachy]

i have a TIFF mode on my panasonic FZ20 which to date have never used, i'm trying to find out what are the main advantages (if any) of using it, i know the files are much bigger eg being when i put it in TIFF mode with a 512 sd card it shows up a max of 30 pics, as opposed to 202 in jpeg mode, so i was wondering would this make a difference say if i wanted to print bigger than A4size pictures,also what is the main difference in RAW and TIFF.

many thanks.

[midtones]

Off the top of my head, TIFF is a 16bit lossless format, resulting in larger files over JPEG compressed.

Raw, is data straight from the cameras sensors. There's many workflows, but in your case, 16bit TIFF is the best quality out the camera.

You could then work on that in most editors, and save the end result as a 8bit compressed JPEG (bypassing the internal JPEG compression) and using the power of your PC to process the TIFF instead.

Hope that helps

K.

[md644]

Just to add, I had an Olympus that had a TIFF mode. It took AGES to write images to the card because they were so big, so if "action" shooting's your thing, the speed (or possible lack thereof) might be a problem.....

[midtones]

Yeah, any decent review or spec of the panasonic should show the speed of writes to the card in TIFF, I think it should be ok overrall.

K.

[midtones]

I've just had a quick look at a review of FZ20 on DPreview.


"All TIFF files are 14,416KB, and each is saved with a 953K (std quality) JPEG"


"With write times averaging around 2.5 seconds for a 14MB TIFF the FZ20 is very fast indeed for a 'compact' digital camera - approximately 5700KB/s, and JPEGs - whatever the size or quality setting - are saved in a second or under (most of this time will be taken up by the processing). Very impressive stuff, and proof that the Venus II engine is more than mere hype."

BUT you cannot use Burst mode if you are saving TIFF.

K.

[senu]

Just a few thoughts

RAW files are digital "negatives" unprocessed by the camera so that adjustments to white balance and exposure issues are left to the "expertise" of the end user . So far Im yet to aquire that expertise but since the cf cards I have are big and fast I do raw+ jpeg for memorable shots anyway Thankfully, the Camera writes to card fairly speedily

Tiff like Jpegs are processed in-camera but retain more " quality" due to losseless compression. It is adviced that jpegs after processing should be archived as Tiffs. Many Cameras dont do them again just stickin to RAw and Jpeg . However they probably expect the image user to save as tiff on the PC later.

My experience with with tiffs is that
they take more space,
are slower to write to cards
and lately the quality between them and the least compressed jpegs is very small .
At any rate none of my cameras now captures as Tiff. But for Print work off site I send the Edited images as Tiff.

As such , for ease of getting images quickly ( and maximizing your card space ) i would perhaps ignore Tiff during the stage of taking the pic until I get onto the PC

Tiffs are the "archiving " format as unlike Jpegs further editing does not result in drop in PQ unlike with jpegs which lose some quality after each resave.
It is also best to send images as Tiff to a Printing Service ( not online ; the files are large) as you would be giving the printing service your best quality ( albeit larger sized) mages
HTH

[RimBlock]

If I remember correctly, RAW is a base TIFF file with all the camera setting information. The file is compressed using lossless compression where as jpg's use lossy compression giving potential artifacts depending on how agressive the compression algorithum is.

Tiff will give a more 'pure' image starting point but will mean more work and you loose a large number of shots per card over saving in jpeg. As mentioned by others here you may come up against writting speed issues if you are trying to take rapid shots as well.

If you are willing to spend the time and really want the very best out of the shots then save in Tiff. If you want good shots that don't have to be the very best or you have not got any access to storage for a time and are at risk of filling your cards then go for jpg.

Regards
RB

[beachy]

so in summary then if i want to print off bigger pics ie A4 + for better quality use TIFF and for anything smaller JPEG is ok, and i take it there is no problem with mixing TIFF and JPEG files on the same sd card, although i know i will lose file space on the card there won't be any other problems doing this ?

Originally Posted by beachy

so in summary then if i want to print off bigger pics ie A4 + for better quality use TIFF and for anything smaller JPEG is ok, and i take it there is no problem with mixing TIFF and JPEG files on the same sd card, although i know i will lose file space on the card there won't be any other problems doing this ?

Not really. The different file types are really about portability and how they react to post production. If you don't do any post production then just stick with jpg and get more pics on your card. At full resolution and least compression you won't notice the differents of printed pics.

If you do post production then use RAW. You can create a Tiff or Jpg from your processed raw image. There is no real point in using TIFF on a camera unless you want to do post production and don't have access to a raw converter. This would have been the case a few years ago but shouldn't be the case nowadays.