What do "fine," "standard," and "economy" mean?

The Quality settings of my Minolta Xt and X50 list fine, standard,

and economy choices (plus tiff for the Xt). I know these represent

JPEG compression, but nowhere (neither on the camera nor in the

manual) does it say how much compression is involved. Anyone know

what they actually represent, and how bad is it?

JPEG compression varies with the subject matter; for a given "quality setting" in a camera. In the background is all one tone; the ratio of uncompressed file size to compressed will be large. If the photo is a super detailed image; the file size will be larger; the compression ratio less. In a series of images at the same setting; the file sizes can vary 2 to 1 or more; for the same "setting".

As difficult as it may be to improve on the quality of Gary Woodward's response, let me take a shot at it.

 

I don't recall any digicam's documentation that I've seen quantify the amount of compression for the various quality settings. If you wish to at least approximate them, try the following:

 

Take some photographs at each of the three settings. For each setting, in turn: (a) note the sizes of the files taken at the target quality setting, in bytes; (b) open each of the files in the image editor of your choice; © without making any edits to the images, resave each of them at the default quality setting of the image editor, and compare the new file sizes to the originals; (d) continue to resave the files without any edits, but at various quality settings, comparing the resulting file sizes to the original after each save. Eventually, you'll get a good feel (you'll rarely, if ever, match the original file sizes exactly) for the amount of compression -- at least relative to your favorite image editor -- for each of your camera's quality settings.

 

Hope this helps.

Bill,

 

I would like to take your question seriously.

 

I have encountered these same vague categories myself and often don't have a clue as to what they mean.

 

In addition, most instruction books are worthless!

 

I am not familiar with your camera or with its resolution.

 

However, I would venture a guess that "Fine" indicates the highest jpeg resolution for the camera. "Economy" would indicate the lowest resolution, and "Standard" would fall somewhere in the middle.

 

I am also guessing that "fine" would produce a good 8x10 print and "Economy" would produce not much more than a 4x6" snapshot. "Standard" would probably give you a good 5X7" print.

 

With "Fine" you might be able to push a satisfactory 11X14" print.

 

I am saying all this by experience with many different digital cameras.

 

I also wish that the manufactures would be very exact, very direct, very clear, and very specific in what they mean by these meaningless terms! I also often wish God would speak to me directly as well, so I think we need to just do some testing and see what we get, and hope for the best.

 

Play with your camera a bit and see what you get.

TIFF is uncompressed. The others are varying degrees of compression. I think the actual algorithms used for the different settings would be rather closely held as each maker wants to try for the best results in a competitive market. As others have noted, compression results will differ with the nature of the picture.

 

In my Fuji S602 manual there is a chart which gives approximate image file sizes for different resolutions and quality modes and then gives an estimated number of shots for a given media size. There might be something like that in your manuals.

 

You could try a series of repeated shots of the same subject (or a series of subjects would be a broader sample) with the different settings. That would give you a couple of things - file properties that you could check for size and samples to use to print test pictures. If you put a little tag of some sort in the corner, you could note setting details that should be visible in the prints.

 

My guess is that you'd find TIFF and Fine almost completely undistinguishable in practical uses - I don't think these are the cameras one would choose if maximum quality was the objective. But less than Fine is maybe false economy. Given the fall-off in memory prices, I think you might just as well spend that money on a higher capacity card or two instead of on a series of prints.

 

Every once in a while on some forum, someone tries to maximize the numbers of shots and keep memory costs down and then selects a low res/high compression option. You could get roughly 500 640x480 "normal" (between fine and basic for Fuji) shots on a 64 meg card. That might allow for fair on screen results but probably won't give acceptable print results even at 3x5.

Hope this doesn't confuse you further: the <B>jpegdump</B> program

shows the approximate quality factor (and chroma subsampling) for

JPEG files. Some digital cameras use the same JPEG quality factor

at a given setting, while others change quality to achieve relatively

uniform file size. I disagree with Craig that TIFF and JPEG Fine

are "almost completely undistinguishable." Especially after editing

it's easy to see artifacting even in the highest quality JPEG.

Bill, only you can judge for yourself how "bad" the compression is. Everyone has a different threshold for image quality. Fortunately, your digital camera provides instant and FREE results so shoot some test shots of your most common subjects (ie: people, landscapes, etc) and then compare the results on your computer screen and, if you want to make prints, then compare the prints as well (there goes the FREE part).

 

MY experience with my Minolta A1 is that I can't discern any difference between images shot with Extra Fine and Fine mode. You may find the same in your tests with your camera.

 

Larry

For the Minolta XT, <a href="http://www.steves-digicams.com/2003_reviews/dimagext.html">Steves-Digicams.com</a> provides a chart of storage capacities based on the various Quality/compression settings. Does this have any info you are looking for?<p>Storage capacity (approx., with 16MB SD card)<p>--------2048x1536---1600x1200---1280x960----640x480<br>Economy 32 frames----47 frames----69 frames----150 frames<br>Standard 17 frames----27 frames----39 frames----100 frames<br>Fine-------9 frames----14 frames----22 frames-----69 frames<br>Super fine-1 frame------2 frames------3 frames-----14 frames

Bill: try <a href="http://www.photo.net/learn/jpeg/">THIS</a>. Explains the underlying compression ratios, etc.</p>

 

Cameras use quite a wide range of compressions: E.G. my Digilux 2 compresses 5Mp files to about 3.5 Mb at "finest" setting, whereas the 8Mp cameras I've tried compress to about 2.1 Mb (Canon Pro 1, Olympus 8080, Minolta A2) at their best quality settings. Compared to the "expanded" full RGB file size - i.e., resaved as a TIFF - the Digilux is compressing 4:1 (14Mb RGB TIFF to 3.5) while the others are compressing almost 10:1 (24Mb RGB TIFF to 2.5). Dpreview.com commented on the fact that the Digilux jpegs do, in fact, show an exceptional freedom from jpeg artifacts due to the ultralow compression used.

Remember this is the Xt and X50 he's asking about. Cycle times for TIFFs are reported in reviews as running 20-30 seconds, reviews report distortion and softness and/or vignetting in corners, limited control options, etc. While there may be some times that a TIFF might be appropriate from these cameras, and there are some enthusiasts that would seek them out for those applications, there are inherent limitations to these platforms when it comes to maximizing "quality." The typical user is not going to work heavily with TIFFs. The typical user is far less likely to notice the differences between TIFFs and Fine than Fine and Standard or Economy. They are likely to notice the operational differences - TIFFs are cumbersome and slow to work with for a very limited increase in quality.

Craig: Take a couple of sips of coffee and re-read my post. I'm not talking about >>shooting<< TIFFS in the camera: I'm talking about saving pictures in TIFF format from Photoshop. As a way of pointing out just how strongly some cameras compress the data in making jpegs.