JPEG Compression
As you fool around with your SLR's menus, you'll eventually stumble on an option that governs the file format of the photos you're about to take. Here, for example, is where you can opt to shoot RAW files or JPEG+RAW (RAW or JPEG?).
But if you're taking regular JPEG files, you're also offered a choice of JPEG types: superfine, fine, standard, and so on.
As you move down the scale, you're telling the camera to take lower-quality photosâthe resulting JPEG files are compressed so that less information is used to describe each pixel. The result is that the photos take up less memory-card space.
It's hard to imagine anyone, these days, who'd buy an SLR and then voluntarily degrade the picture quality, especially when memory cards are so cheap they practically fall out of boxes of Cracker Jack. Leave your camera on fine or superfine.
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