Artistic Tools - Format and Resolution in Photography

When you take a picture with a traditional 35mm camera, you press the shutter and that image is burned into a medium we call “film”. With a digital camera, you press the shutter release and capture an image on the image sensor. The image is then transferred to some type of media card. The manufacture of the camera determines which media card works with your camera. The media card is like a blank canvas. Most artists would agree that one canvas is no better than another, what matters to them is what type of paint goes on the canvas.

When you choose paint you consider each type and how compatible it is with the colors you already have. Most digital cameras offer three formats: JPEG, RAW, and TIFF format. To give a more accurate comparison, let’s assume you are taking pictures with a 5 mega pixel camera. If you saved your shots in JPEG format, they would be 1.5 MB in size. In RAW format, they would be 7.5 MB in size. In TIFF format, they would be a whopping 14.5 MB per image.

JPEG's offer a descent image quality and a small file size. RAW format assumes you will change the contrast; lighting, color balance and other setting after you get the image. It does offer you much more control, but it also entails a huge learning curve. The TIFF format applies all the settings of the camera and has excellent image quality, but the files are much larger!

JPEG is by far the most popular format, even though the quality is NOT as good the other two. Don’t get me wrong, for the average photographer JPEG is not bad, it’s just not as good. This may sound contradictory, but remember Beta Max VCR’s? Beta Max was a different format than VHS and it was better quality, but it did not catch on. Besides being smaller, JPEG is also the most compatible with all major photo-editing software.

So with all things considered each format has its own advantages and disadvantages. But just as a painter must have paint and brushes, you too must consider another factor. The resolution you save a picture at also effects how big the file size is. This often confuses people new to digital photography. Remember this photo tip; format and resolution are two different things.

Format would be similar to choosing oil color, water color, or pastel before you start painting. Resolution would be the number of colors you choose to work with. A camera with 2 Mega pixels for example, would be like having a box with 6 crayons in it. (Your maximum print size would be about 5x7 inches.) A camera with 5 or 6 Mega pixels would be like having the big box with 64 crayons in it. (You could print pictures 18 x 24 inches or larger!) Can you draw with only six crayons? Of course you can, but how much more can you do with 64? Obviously, the higher the Mega Pixels a camera has, the bigger the image you can print and the more options you have. Just remember, 64 crayons takes more space in your hand than 6 crayons; likewise, storing big mega pixel images takes more space on your hard drive.