A Formatting Question From a Newbie: Just Picked up My First Digital - a Nikon D700

[BradleyK]

New to the digital realm, as well as this forum (first post), I have a couple of questions to throw out to the experts regarding formats:

1). What, if any, are the advantages of shooting TIFFs over jpegs or jpeg + raw, etc? My interest here relates to a website I hope to have up and running by the late spring. I am interested in being able to sell my images online and am curious re industry practices (I have been shooting TIFFs to date).

2). Why the lack of uniformity among the major players re CF vs SD vs SDHC?

3). Are there particular advantages among the different types of cards? (I am referring here to the range of offerings in the CF format used in my Nikon.)

4). And a peripherally-related issue: What is the best way to "archive" digital images?

A thanks in advance to those who respond.

 

[pschwart]

#4: There is no "best" way. This will depend on how many files you need to track, the intended use, computer type, personal preferences, yada yada.
#1-3: Some quick Google searches will answer these questions

 

[jeffreyg]

I have a Nikon D300s that takes both cards CF SD. You can designate one to be the primary and the other to be a backup or to collect images if the primary is full. TIFF and RAW are not compressed files and hold more of your image information. JPEG files are compressed. With RAW (in my PS) you have to use Nikon software although it (the NIKON software) gives you the option to convert the files to TIFF. Although I primarily use film, when I do use the digital I use the CF as the primary in TIFF and the SD as the backup in JPEG. For emailing images or for the web I think most use JPEGs. For my website I used PS or TIFF then "saved for the web" as JPEGs = smaller files easily opened faster. SDHC is SD with higher capacity. To archive I would backup in more than one place. You can use your computer hard drive, a portable hard drive, flash drives, CDs, DVDs or the CFs and SDs. Others may have different suggestions. So far the above has worked for me.

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[L Gebhardt]

1) Shoot Raw over Tiff. Tiff has no advantages over RAW, and minimal advantages over JPG. Get Lightroom, aperture or Nikon Capture to convert them to what ever format you need (TIFF, JPG, PSD).

4) See above and get Lightroom to organize all your images. I make backups on external hard drives that I rotate out and keep off site. This is for all my files, not just the images.