Image Capture: NEF, JPG or TIFF ?

One of the important questions is whether to take images in NEF, JPG or TIFF format with a Nikon camera.

If you are using a recent Nikon lens the camera will have lens data in firmware to correct images on the camera when you save as JPG or TIFF.  On this website all data is collected as NEF and converted to maximum quality JPG using default Photoshop settings for image analysis. This is because raw files require a small amount of sharpening. Other sites such as opticallimits who use Imatest software also do this.

Choose NEF:

If you want to preserve the original image data to process with software such as DxO PhotoLab, Lightroom or Photoshop. Photoprocessing software such as DxO PhotoLab, Lightroom or Photoshop can be used to make a variety of corrections. In the example below the image has been processed with Photolab 4 using the default settings which gives very good results. The NEF data, default Photoshop and  camera JPG data are also shown (TIFF file results are similar to the camera JPG)

Choose JPG or TIFF:

The Nikon on-camera correction (JPG or TIFF) does a very good job and will suit anyone who doesn't want to do to much software tweaking.  Be aware that the highest quality TIFF files are very large, where as the highest quality JPEG files are compressed and are much smaller.

An example of differences in image processing is shown below