Recording Image Resolution On Your Digital Camera.

[Kan Win]

Recording Image Resolution on your Digital Camera.

I myself use mostly SHQ = Super High Quality.

3264 x 2448 pixels, approx 3 to 4 mb per photo and print 10 x 12 inch photos before or after cropping. In TIFF 14 mb or more, but rarely use this one as the saving time onto my card take too long.

Which do you use and/or prefer? And why ?

Happy Shooting,

Yours truly,

Kan Win

[Chang_paarp]

There are 2 issues here.

1) How many megapixels does your camera have, and what setting do you use?

If you have a 6Mp camera but only set it onto email quality because you can get more photos on the card you will be dissapointed by you prints. Don't laugh I have this discussion several times a week with new camera owners. The cost of memory is not the impediment to using maximum resolution is once was.

2) What quality setting do you use for the recording on the card. This will cause some debate.

There are some who say "only use RAW format" because it contains all the data from the sensor, that is great but you have to convert it to something usefull to do more than look at it.

Some say use tif for much the same reasons above, at least it can be printed and opened in photoshop.

Some say use the highest quality setting for jpeg. This is a compromise between quality and disc space. The down side of jpeg is that is compresses by taking a group of similar values and giving them a value, eg 5 blue pixels are value N the algorithim that reconstructs the image sees N and puts 5 blue pixels. To get more compression the number of shades that are converted to N increases, so you get a "blocky" grain in the rebuilt image. Look at the newspaper or magazine and you will get the idea. Jpeg is a good achiving format, once you are finnished working, or a good "transport" format, providing it is a high quality (big) jpeg, continued saving will see more and more data thrown away for the compression. Try saving a jpeg a few times and notice how quickly the smooth areas become blocky.

I use jpeg for initial storage on the camera, and convert to photoshop or another format to work on the image and if I am convinced that I have finnished playing I save back to jpeg. I usually keep the origonal file and If I have space some of the working ones too, CD's are cheap. The data is you negatives.

[hughden]

Agree with Chang Parp, if you have a camera with reasonable pixel count, you are losing the benefit of that if you use a less than high setting for capturing your images.

I have switched to using RAW since discovering Rawshooter. It has such a good workflow, particularly in reviewing images and marking them for deletion (I do a lot of that!). I also like that your original RAW never changes so I can use those for back-up and can come back to them if I want to do future editing (should I ever learn to use Photoshop properly). Rawshooter has some nice and easy tools to improve the image before you convert it.

I then convert from RAW to TIFF and use "convert to web" in Photoshop should I want to a more reasonable sized jpeg.

But if I am shooting sports and want a bust of images then I switch to jpeg cos my camera slows down a lot if you ask it to capture multiple RAWs.

[Tywais]

I have a 8Mpixel camera and the majority of the time shoot at full resolution, extra fine. This is 3264x2448 (6.1MB/picture). I have 4-modes within each resolution - Standard, Fine, Extra fine and RAW. Difference between the first 3 modes is the amount of compression done by the jpeg engine, less compression - less artifacts from the compression.

This gives me about 160 shots on my 1G memory card. If for some reason I plan on an extended shoot then will step down one notch allowing 320 shots on the card (rarely do this though). Haven't really tried RAW mode yet but will look at hughden's program "Rawshooter" and play with it a little and see how much difference there is.

If I manipulate the image in Photoshop I will then save (a copy) back in jpeg format with minimum compression (level 10). I suspect if you use RAW mode it may be necessary to do more 'post processing' of the image in Photoshop due to no internal (camera) corrections being applied. Someone with more experience with RAW mode can let me know if that is true or not.

[hughden]

A bit beyond my technical understanding too; but the RAW processor uses a profile for each camera (which can be changed) which will apply certain steps before you see the RAW (such as sharpening). I think this is intended to give you the same image as you would get if you took the image via a TIFF or JPEG from the camera. Certainly when I get a well composed shot (rare for me) into Rawshooter, I just convert it and no further processing is required.

Anyway, try it and see and let us know what you think. Rawshooter Essentials is free (www.pixmantec.com)

[Tywais]

A bit beyond my technical understanding too; but the RAW processor uses a profile for each camera (which can be changed) which will apply certain steps before you see the RAW (such as sharpening). I think this is intended to give you the same image as you would get if you took the image via a TIFF or JPEG from the camera. Certainly when I get a well composed shot (rare for me) into Rawshooter, I just convert it and no further processing is required.

Anyway, try it and see and let us know what you think. Rawshooter Essentials is free (www.pixmantec.com)

Thanks for the link hughden. I'll have to look at the software that came with my camera. Seem to remember a Photoshop profile plugin or that may have been for my printer.

Just came across these links for your RAW interest.

http://www.imaging-resource.com/EVENTS/PMA...1045632455.html

http://www.outbackphoto.com/artofraw/raw_04/essay.html

Edited January 12, 2006 by tywais

[Phil Conners]

Use highest possible, why else buy the camera? If you can accept less quality buy a cheaper camera and save your $$$.

[buadhai]

I never make prints. I only use the images for e-mail and web sites. I bought the lowest resolution decent quality camera I could find. It has 3 megapixels. However, I set it to record images at 1600X1200. That gives me enough wiggle room for cropping if I need it. The images that I e-mail and post on web pages are usually about 528 X 396 (about 33% of the original resolution).

But, I'm not a photographer, I just take snapshots.

[Tywais]

After looking at the links that I supplied a little closer I had forgotten I had a copy of Adobe Photoshop CS2 v9.0 which has RAW support built into it. Just installed it and it works very nicely. This link shows the cameras supported.

http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/ca...ml?camerarawnav

[astral]

Use highest possible, why else buy the camera? If you can accept less quality buy a cheaper camera and save your $$$.

Absolutely right. Anything less is shere folly.

Shoot RAW if your camera permits it.

If you want more photos, then buy a bigger memory card.

Edited January 13, 2006 by astral