Setting Tiff - Nikon D300 Complete Manual

Hide thumbs Also See for D300:

Table of Contents

It's unlikely that you would see the difference between the

best JPEG image the D300 can produce and a TIFF. At least

not under normal conditions. But critical image users can,

and they are annoyed by very small differences that can arise.

For example, in large tonal ramps of sky, if you start trying to

post process a JPEG to provide a polarization effect, you

might start encountering issues at the 8 pixel margins of the

JPEG compression blocks. Perhaps not big issues, but enough

to roughen up the continuous tonal ramp in those areas.

Likewise, as you start to sharpen up the image you might

discover that there are JPEG artifacts at a high-detail edge that

now become more visible.

TIFF renders all those potential problems as non-existent. You

just won't encounter them. In general, the more potential

problems you can remove in your image the better off you are

down the road. Still, the tradeoff is unbalanced: you're

increasing the file size by over 6x to get a potential small

visual benefit. That's a tough trade to make. Most people will

pick the smaller file size.

The D300 creates one type of TIFF file, an RGB TIFF that has

pixels stored with 8-bit red, green, and blue components. I

mention this because the D1 series could create a second

type, YcBcR TIFF, which was one 8-bit luminance and two 8-

bit color components.

Setting TIFF

The D300 allows you to create three sizes of TIFF images:

L = Large = 4288 x 2848 pixels

M = Medium = 3216 x 2136 pixels

S = Small = 2144 x 1424 pixels

Thom Hogan's Complete Guide to the Nikon D300