Bernie,
My digital camera takes the pictures in JPG and I have it set to about the medium resolution. When I have a picture that I take from my Nikon and want to save a really good copy to CD I change my scanner to scan it in a s a BMP. I can always change a copy of the BMP to JPG by using my photo program. But for most uses, the digital is much faster and takes acceptable pictures. The main advantage that I have found so far as home use is with a BMP image, you get a better picture if you blow it up to 12 X 14 for example. But my default scanner setting is jpg also. I just have a cheap Olympus C-4000 zoom camera. It is ony 4 megapixel so it isn't going to take the kind of shots say a 6.5 megapixel Canon will.
Ron
