Re: File size: is tiff better than raw? Is argentic better than digital??

TIFF is not better than RAW, not in the least. TIFF is basically an uncompressed JPEG with very slight real-world benefits over JPEG with all that extra file space needed to store it. RAW is a whole different world, with lots of adjustments that can be dealt with after the shoot in a controlled environment.

It takes a lot more resolution to make a good image from a decent (not drum, anyway) scan versus from a digital camera. And megapixels aren't megapixels, but comparing at least DSLR to film

Where the proverbial rubber meets the road: I got pretty decent 8x10 prints out of a sharp 35mm slide with a 2700dpi scanner. That's almost 11 megapixels. I have sharper 16x24 prints from a 6mp DSLR.

PS - "Argentic" is my new word of the day. :)

Wow - the clock is screwed up here too (also at roadbikereview right now). My reply is showing up first and as though it was posted at 2:54 p.m. More like 7:54 p.m. central (GMT -6:00, which is correct in "My Account").

Dear all, I have a question that is puzzling me... I am currently shooting in argentic with a 35 mm Canon EOS. I recently scanned by best pictures for safety and relized that a 16 bit TIFF file from my medium range scanner (Nikon Cool scan - 4000 dpi) weights nothing less than 135 Mo (half of that if in 8 bits). When I use a more professonal Imacon (6300 dpi), the file goes up to 300 Mo.

I was very surprised to discover that when you shoot with a top range digital SLR such as the Canon EOS 5D Mark II, the largest raw file per shot is around 25 Mo...

which was very surprising to me: does that mean that images produced by a full frame sensor DSLR are of much lower quality (much less detail / information) than the scanned images from a conventional 35 mm film?...or am I confused ? Is there a correlation between the size and image quality?
Thanks a lot for your kind help!

There are several things to bear in mind

1. Your 16-bit TIFF files are uncompressed. The data from your Coolscan is at most 14 bits so for every primary colour for each pixel you are recording two empty bits (zeroes) which is wasted space
2. Your Coolscan will only use the full 14 bits on images with an extreme range of scene brightness. Most scenes don't go beyond 12 bits. Add another two empty bits
3. Your Coolscan will record with great detail - the grain of the film. If you're shooting Tri-X the grain adds to the beauty of the image but for most films it is non-subject matter i.e. noise and there is lots of it. The grain stops you from doing lots of image enhancement tricks that make the end result look better. A digital image is clean, pure subject data
4. Your Canon 5D is putting into the RAW file a 12-bit image but also a lot of metadata about how it did the picture which is useful to your editing program afterwards
5. Finally when you look at your images on screen or print or convert to a JPG - your 12 or 14-bit data is resampled down to 8 bits.

Sure the TIFF file from a scan is bigger than a RAW file from a DSLR but the amount of useful information in there is less.

Brief answer: no TIFF is not better than RAW. And film is not better than digital though it has some advantages

I agree with Another View. On my equipment a large print (A3) from my 6Mpix DSLR looks better than a scanned 24x36 film image. And a 12MPix DSLR image - to be honest it looks about the same as the 6MPix one.

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Originally Posted by Franglais

And a 12MPix DSLR image - to be honest it looks about the same as the 6MPix one.

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I'm shooting with a D200 which I think is 10mp. I haven't done any large prints (or many at all, really) with it but it's not 'twice as good' as the 6mp Fuji S2 I used to have when comparing on-screen. All pixels are not created equal...

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Originally Posted by another view

I'm shooting with a D200 which I think is 10mp. I haven't done any large prints (or many at all, really) with it but it's not 'twice as good' as the 6mp Fuji S2 I used to have when comparing on-screen. All pixels are not created equal...

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I always make a print when I'm testing something. I've had some surprises with images that looked great when blown up 300% on-screen and were just wrong when I got round to making a print.

A3+ is about 30x40 inches which is the largest I can go and it's the largest I need to go. I only have so much wall space available. I hardly ever crop my images, so it seems to make no difference to the finished result if I did the image on the D70(6Mpix), the D200, D60 (10Mpix) or the D300(12Mpix) - at the lowest ISO setting. Whack up the sensitivity to 1600ISO and yes there is an obvious difference in terms of noise between the D70 and the others..

As for viewing on-screen - my online collection of viewable images is mostly 800x600 pixels that's about 0.5Mpix. And they look great.

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Originally Posted by another view

TIFF is not better than RAW, not in the least. TIFF is basically an uncompressed JPEG with very slight real-world benefits over JPEG with all that extra file space needed to store it. RAW is a whole different world, with lots of adjustments that can be dealt with after the shoot in a controlled environment.

It takes a lot more resolution to make a good image from a decent (not drum, anyway) scan versus from a digital camera. And megapixels aren't megapixels, but comparing at least DSLR to film

Where the proverbial rubber meets the road: I got pretty decent 8x10 prints out of a sharp 35mm slide with a 2700dpi scanner. That's almost 11 megapixels. I have sharper 16x24 prints from a 6mp DSLR.

PS - "Argentic" is my new word of the day. :)

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Not TIFF is not a JPEG and will never be a JPEG. I can save my NEF files (RAW) as tiff's and the file size goes from about 5.7 meg to between 12 to 24 mega it I use TIFF lossless compression (12 bit color depth). JPEG is only for ever 8 bit color depth.

It doesn't mater JPEG is always loss data no mater what the settings are but TIFF you never lose a bit.

As far of the scan, the scanner did not focus or the slide was not sharply or the scanner optics were dirty. I had the same problem with a sharp slide and soft scan, after I cleaned the mirror I got much better sharp scans.

Interesting thread. I suppose there is some overkill in megapixels and dpi and bit mapping when all you are doing is making prints.
There are so many factors involved, including ISO, DOF (and how it affects sharpness) and printer quality, but I believe that the more you start with in every aspect the better your finished product.
I shoot at 14.6 megapixels with the fastest lenses I can afford, and I try to use the slowest shutter speed (for the widest appature) and lowest ISO possible. All these things make a difference in the original.
I shoot for publication, and that demands a little more than for just making prints. When I went digital, I started out shooting RAW and converting it to 18-bit TIFF for exposures that I thought were cover quality, which gave me huge files of about 80 MB. I've since learned that for the majority of publications, this too is overkill. Most of them can reporduce images just fine from a low-compression JPEG, so that's what I shoot. I like this a lot more, because I don't have to mess with converting a RAW file. I realize the biggest advantage of shooting RAW is it gives you great lattitude for tweeking and editing before you convert it to some other type of file for reporduction, but I've also learned a lot of publications don't like anything "messed with" before they get it. They like to do any necessary tweeking themselves.
I enjoy playing with my images on the computer sometimes, but my goal is to capture as fine an image as possible from the beginning. That's challenging and complicated enough, so that's where I focus most of my attention.

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Originally Posted by freygr

Not TIFF is not a JPEG and will never be a JPEG. I can save my NEF files (RAW) as tiff's and the file size goes from about 5.7 meg to between 12 to 24 mega it I use TIFF lossless compression (12 bit color depth). JPEG is only for ever 8 bit color depth.

It doesn't mater JPEG is always loss data no mater what the settings are but TIFF you never lose a bit.

As far of the scan, the scanner did not focus or the slide was not sharply or the scanner optics were dirty. I had the same problem with a sharp slide and soft scan, after I cleaned the mirror I got much better sharp scans.

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I think that's what AV is saying - JPEG is compressed, TIFF isn't, just like you said. JPEG, even saved at 12 quality on photoshop, will always show some loss of quality. TIFF will not. However, TIFF is much more similar to JPEG than it is to RAW. The only real difference between JPEG and TIFF is the lossless saving and the better color depth.

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Originally Posted by livin4lax09

I think that's what AV is saying

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Pretty much. Think of jpeg and Tiff as one workflow and RAW as something completely different. If a shot was made as a jpeg, saving as a TIFF won't make it anything other than 8-bit (jpeg is 8-bit by definition), but you'll gain slightly in the fact that there will be no compression when re-saved after editing.

In my own experience, a high quality jpeg that's only been saved once or twice will make an excellent print. I don't know that my eyes would see the difference between this and the same print made from a TIFF file. If not, then to me the advantage is only hypothetical. Space on the hard drive would sure get used faster though...

Tiff is a lossless format just like RAW. RAW format is unprocessed data from the photo senor and TIFF has been processed. BMP, TIFF, and RAW file formates are lossless file formats but JPG is loses data in the camera and each save you lose more data. There are so many JPG compression settings that amount off data lost can vary greatly. Photoshop (the versions I have worked with) does not give you access to all the JPG settings.

Can anyone get rid of this idiot SterTdefcoece? Obviously a spammer and taking up valuable space.

I've actually heard of quite a few (obviously confident) pro's who submit jpegs to their editors and get them published. So I guess taking time to get a technically good exposures are just as valuable in digital as thery are in film.....

Dave

I've printed from jpg and tiff, and while I always send a tiff to be printed, to be honest it isn't a noticeable difference at the sizes I print. It's more of a do-it-right the first-time issue for me, I think.

However, once you save as a .tiff, you've made irrevocable changes to the RAW file (unless you save as a copy) because your software has guessed how to develop it. Always best to keep the RAW file around just in case.