The most important piece of information involving digital cameras,in my opinion, that I can share with you is file size.

Most middle priced to low end cameras save the picture you take in the JPEG format. JPEG stands for Joint Photographic Experts Group. It is a trade off method of storing your pictures because it saves space and allows you to record more images on the memory card. I am sure, if you upload scans here on Greg's board, you are familiar with the JPEG format for storing and sending images.

The most important fact you should take away from the information I am sharing with you,even if you NEVER buy a digital camera,is EVERYTIME YOU OPEN A JPEG FILE TO VIEW IT - IT LOSES QUALITY. Overtime it will lose its quality to the point of becoming a "horrible mess" of a photo that has no resemblance to the original picture that was first taken.

The reason it loses quality is because JPEG reinterprets the picture so that it doesn't have to record exact data for every pixel in the image. Ultimately this results in lost information that is replaced in the process with little color anomalies that seem to resemble film grains. Eventually the entire image loses its quality and in the end will become a "terrible" looking photo. If you ever ask yourself "what's happening to my image file? It does not look like the photo I took?" you will understand the significance of what I am sharing with you.

There are several ways to avoid the slow deterioration of your photo images.

1) The first time you open a JPEG image re-save it to a "loseless format". It has been suggested to use the TIFF file save or Tagged Image File Format. The tagged image file format or TIFF will record every pixel in the exact shade of the 16 million possible colors that the image sensor in your camera can capture. Everytime you open a TIFF file it will look exactly the same as the first time you opened it. No loss of picture quality or deterioration of the image.
However, there is a trade off. It takes much more space on your computor to save a TIFF file than a JPEG file. So much space that you will never want to send anyone a photo or scan in the TIFF file method because it will take them forever to download. Unless of course you don't like the person you're sending the image file too than file size will not make any difference.

2) Another way to avoid the loss of quality of the JPEG file is to transfer the file to a CD. Once transferred to a CD the deterioration is stopped. What I learned is to save the original JPEG file in the TIFF mode and than transfer the TIFF image file to a CD. You may also just transfer the JPEG file to a CD and avoid the TIFF file save altogether. It's up to you. Once you have the images on the CD the quality loss is stopped.

I know many here on the board save their scans in the JPEG format and open and close the file many times. If you want to save the quality of those scans or photos follow the information I have shared with you. A scan can probably be replaced if it should lose its quality by doing it over. The photo once taken can never be retaken - not ever.

Well that's it for now. There is much more to learn. Learning as all of you know is an ongoing process that never stops. I have tried to share what I felt are the most important concepts one should know in wanting to START to learn about digital cameras.

I received an email from one of our board members Bob Touts who shared with me that this months issue of consumer reports has information about digital cameras. Perhaps you might want to pick up a copy and see if it contains addtional information that could be useful in the learning process.

I enjoyed sharing the information and hope those who are interested got something out of it.

My Best to all, Jim Perlowski