Common formats for digital camera images are the Joint Photography Experts Group standard (JPEG) and Tagged Image File Format (TIFF).
Many cameras, especially professional or DSLR cameras, support a Raw format. A raw image is the unprocessed set of pixel data directly from the camera's sensor. They are often saved in formats proprietary to each manufacturer, such as NEF for Nikon, CR2 for Canon, and MRW for Minolta. Adobe Systems has released the DNG format, a royalty free raw image format which has been adopted by a few camera manufacturers.
Raw files initially had to be processed in specialized image editing programs, but over time many mainstream editing programs have added support for them, such as Google's Picasa. Editing raw format images allows much more flexibility in settings such as white balance, exposure compensation, color temperature, and so on. In essence raw format allows the photographer make major adjustments without losing image quality that would otherwise require retaking the picture.
Formats for movies are AVI, DV, MPEG, MOV (often containing motion JPEG), WMV, and ASF (basically the same as WMV). Recent formats include MP4, which is based on the QuickTime format and uses newer compression algorithms to allow longer recording times in the same space.
Other formats that are used in cameras but not for pictures are the Design Rule for Camera Format (DCF), an ISO specification for the camera's internal file structure and naming, Digital Print Order Format (DPOF), which dictates what order images are to be printed in and how many copies, and the Exchangeable Image File Format (Exif), which uses metadata tags to document the camera settings and date and time for image files.
