Jpeg Recommendation; Tiff Format - Nikon D300 Complete Manual

V1.02
You might wonder if turning up the High ISO NR setting
would help with the things I just mentioned. Yes and no. It
certainly helps remove edge destruction artifacts. However, in
doing so, you lose detail. Noise reduction techniques, no
matter if applied in camera or via post processing software,
tend to "blur" distinct edges. It's difficult to get the balance of
noise reduction and sharpening just right. Too much noise
reduction and any sharpening tends to make for what some
call very plastic-looking detail. Too much sharpening makes
for visible edge changes (see "Sharpening" on page <413>).
The two together can result in very unnatural looks to your
edges.

JPEG Recommendation

Note the file sizes of the various JPEG formats: fine produces
files about twice as large as normal which in turn produces
files about twice as large as basic. That's a good indicator of
how much information you're losing with each ratchet up the
compression ladder (i.e. half!). Stick with fine if you can.
Likewise, stick with Optimal quality if you can. The higher
you set the ISO value, the more emphatic I make those
statements and I start dropping the "if you can" at the really
high ISO values.

TIFF Format

The D300 also can store information in TIFF format (in
Windows, the three-letter file extension limit reduces this to
.TIF). TIFF (pronounced TIF) stands for Tagged Image File
Format, which was originally proposed by a group of
multimedia software developers and later standardized.
TIFF is a unique format in that it provides a set of "tags" that
allow the file to define information it contains in a way so that
virtually every computer and OS can render the file correctly.
For example, IBM PC-type machines that use Intel processors
store data in a different "byte-order" for information than do
Motorola-based Macintoshes, but TIFF has a tag to specify
which order the information is stored in.
Thom Hogan's Complete Guide to the Nikon D300 Page 150