I am sending some C41 colour film to be developed. I'm not going to be requesting any prints, just scans of the negative to CD. I can choose between high resolution, high quality JPG or TIFF.
The TIFF files are more expensive and will be much larger files.
Although I'm not intending to do extensive post processing on these pictures, I may make small adjustments or bigger adjustments when I feel a picture needs it. I am used to shooting RAW on my digital camera and the extra PP latitude this brings when editing my photos in Lightroom.
I know that theoretically a TIFF file has the potential to retain more data than a lossy JPG, giving more PP latitude.
My question is does this theoretical benefit translate to a real post processing benefit when making minor/medium adjustments in Lightroom?
Would the benefit be of a similar magnitude to that of RAW over high quality JPG, or much less?
On a secondary note: I understand that there are various options when saving to TIFF (e.g. 8bit vs 16bit) though I do not fully understand what advantages these give. If I choose TIFF do I need to make sure the lab is going to use particular settings in order to get the benefit over JPG?
Answer
If the TIFF files are only 8bit and the resolution is the same then there will be very little (unless the JPEG compression is set very high). The only difference will be slight artefacts in high frequency areas and potentially lower colour resolution if chroma sub-sampling is used on the JPEGs.
Additionally if the scan resolution itself is high compared to the resolution of the image, then there will be little difference between TIFF and JPEG as they will both contain more information than the original film.
It seems to me that they're just trying to create an artificial differentiation to increase revenues. The only time I'd consider paying half again for TIFFs would be under the following conditions:
- The quality of the original negatives was very high
- The TIFF files and scanner were both more than 8 bit
No comments:
Post a Comment