I Used to Take Pictures Now I Create Files. What's With These Files???

     Switching from film to digital capture requires a whole new look at one's photographic knowledge.  I used to create an image by using light to excite the silver halide crystals on a cellulose film.  There were certain films I like better than others.  Now I capture 1's and 0's on a digital sensor and store the images on a memory card. 
     If you look at your QUALITY menu you see some letters that really have no meaning other than in photography.  These are options of different types of files.  Your image can be recorded on your memory card in any of these file formats.  You might think of this as using one type of film on some images and then switching to another for some other shots.  As with anything there are better types of files for one application and others for another application.  It also has to do with how much time you want to spend doctoring up an image and what you want the quality of that image to be. 

HERE ARE SOME EXAMPLES OF DIFFERENT FILE TYPES THAT CAN BE RECORDED ON YOUR MEMORY CARD
Basic point and shoot cameras may have less options and very expensive DSLR's may have a few more.

JPEG fine
JPEG normal
JPEG basic
TIFF 8 bit
TIFF 16 bit
RAW
DNG

RAW +JPEG fine

RAW+JPEG normal

RAW + JPEG basic

When selecting these formats the camera will record a RAW fine and a JPEG file at the same time

To make sense of what these different files mean I will give the PROS and CONS of each: