Question re: TIFF or JPEG on FZ20 (1 Viewer)

Hi there,

I am new to the board and this is my 2nd post. I just got a new FZ20 camera because my Kodak Easyshare wasn't cutting it for my bird photos. So far I love the FZ20 and have taken some nice shots, although I still have a lot to learn!

A question: I love to get the most close-up shots possible, which often means taking the photo at the highest quality setting and then zooming in, in Photoshop. For this, is it advantageous to use the TIFF quality setting? What is the difference between the TIFF setting and the second highest JPEG setting? Is it just the compression?

Thanks a lot for any info or other advice you can offer.

Best regards,
Andrea

From what I've seen, the TIFF setting and highest quality jpeg setting produce extremely similar results on the FZ20 even looked at up close.
If you did some VERY harsh processing on the jpeg image, such as a very severe sharpen, you might just see a difference.
The camera is probably quicker and more pleasant to use on the jpeg setting; particularly if you like to take sequences of pictures in burst mode or with exposure bracketing.
I'd be tempted to stick with using the camera in jpeg mode. If exceptional circumstances meant the the jpeg artifacts became visible as you tried to do your post processing, you could always give your original a quick run through software which "cleans up" the jpeg compression elements such as :
http://www.vicman.net/jpegenhancer/

Better advice still would probably be to suggest you to do a few tests so that you can reach your own conclusions and perhaps tell us what you think :h?:

P.S. Enjoyed your homepage.

P.P.S (sorry) thinking again, the highest quality jpeg setting is so good (not sure about second) reckon you'd probably run into problems of noise becoming visible long before jpeg artifacts if you were doing a severe sharpen. So I guess it's really noise reduction software that's order of the day rather than the "jpeg cleaning" software mentioned above.

I don't have your camera, but from my experience with other cameras (Olympus C-730 and 750 super-zooms), I agree with Norm. I find that even the default "high quality" jpg setting is fine and don't use the "super high quality." And Norm is right about noise - you are much more apt to get digital camera noise artifacts than jpg artifacts if you use high-quality jpg, so you aren't losing anything by not using tif.

If you want to manipulate an image later in multiple sessions, save it as tif after your first session, and it's essentially the same as if it started life as a tif.

normjackson said:

From what I've seen, the TIFF setting and highest quality jpeg setting produce extremely similar results on the FZ20 even looked at up close....Better advice still would probably be to suggest you to do a few tests so that you can reach your own conclusions and perhaps tell us what you think.

Click to expand...

Thanks Norm,

I took some test shots of objects in my house and they do appear identical. The only difference I can see is the amount of time it takes to load the TIFFs on the camera, which for me is a pain, since I can't do the burst shots with it. My recommendation is to use the high JPEG setting.

Best,
Andrea