RAW

If you have the disk space, then saving  the raw files intact is not a bad idea. As I said earlier, it really depends on what you will be doing with the photos after. If you are only ever going to print small prints, ie A4 or smaller, or post on the internet jpgs are fine, but being a lossy save system, every time you do any work on them, data is dumped when saving. This is due to compression. To maintain detail, you must make sure that comression is turned off when saving. The only drawback to this being that the files get bigger each time you save. Tiff's are a lossless system hence the large files.

If you want your photos published, most publishers require photo files over 25 meg in size.  They have the same problem of loss of detail in the printing stage. So Pauls 38 meg files would be ideal. Tiffs seem to be the order of the day for publishing.

I hope that this is clearer than mud. Lol

I only use RAW format on my Olympus DSLR. Software provided free with the camera then enables one to make adjustments in particular to the colour temperature, which is not readily achieved in other ways. The RAW format is then converted into JPG or BMP - but I never use JPG; it results in a (to me) unacceptable deterioration of image quality by introducing halos and aliases, whereas BMP is lossless. Image quality is more important than disk-space, to me. The only time I produce JPGs is to upload to this site.

The other reason I use BMP is that I've written a fair amount of my own s/w to do strange things you will not find in commercially available packages. It's MUCH easier and quicker to make changes in BMP than JPG - not least because you have to make a BMP out of a JPG to do work on it before putting it back into JPG format. [Technically, JPG is a matrix of Fourier coefficients, not pixels. On screen you always only ever see a BMP representation of a JPG. You never see the JPG itself. Its appearance would bear no relation to the picture it encodes.] 

Some of my BMP manipulation s/w is runnable from my website: www.tonytooth.co.uk

It makes perfect sense Lyn. For this site, a jpeg is of more than adequate quality, and is the default file type for (almost) all cameras, as all PCs can open them. The need for RAW files only becomes an issue if you're serously into getting your images printed.

If the RAW issue isn't something you've worried about before - don't worry about it now!

I so admire your pictures Tony, especially as you are obviously from around my stomping grounds.

I am hoping to be able to grasp the technical jargon one day, when I've completed the college course I am taking now, I will take a photography course.

It's great to see you post here on the forum.

LOL @ Denzil.