I bought a Canon S30, but what is RAW Format?

[yeedog]

So i bought a canon S30 and it's cool, but i was wondering what setting is the best to take pictures in? I was reading the manual and it was talking about RAW format and JPEG.

I know what a jpeg is, but what is RAW?

Also in jpeg mode, what would be the optimal setting for resolution and compression? I guess the best trade off on picture size vs space. I only have the 16MB stick that came with the camera for now, maybe i'll get a larger stick in the future tho.

I'll probably be printing some pictures out if that has any weight on anything. I'm not doing anything profession, this is just a camera for normal stuff.


Thanks all!

-Brian

 

[Nocturnal]

uncompressed TIFF format.

i hope nobody beat me to it.

 

[Wallydraigle]

Actually on some brands of cameras RAW is a separate proprietary file format. I'm not sure what Canon's is but I know Olympus is .orf, and Nikon is .nef (yes it's actually nef). The files usually are not quite as large as a TIFF of the same resolution. RAW is usually preferred if you are going to be doing a lot of editing of your photos because there is minimal in-camera processing done to RAW photos. But on the down side you might need a separate program or plugin to read the file format. This is usually supplied with the camera.

 

[randomlinh]

the raw format is proprietary to canon i beleive... only camera's that specifically say tiff or uncompressed tiff are more universal.