Image Size Advice

[mabas9395]

I have a Canon Rebel XT (350d) which takes 8 megapixel photos and when I put the settings on Large/Fine I can print at least an 11x14 and probably a 16x20. I also have three 1gig memory cards that will give me about 725 pictures total. I also have three kids who we are taking to DL the last week of April and my #1 responsibility is to take a ton of pictures for the wife to scrapbook. I also usually just print out 4x6's and would probably not print anything larger than an 8x10.

Here is the problem. I don't think I have enough memory to hold all the pictures I want to take if I leave it at the highest quality jpg setting (I don't shoot raw for family events, I save that for my "hobby shots"). My three cards have been more than enough for "regular life", if I got more memory, I would probably never need it after this trip.

So what I am trying to decide between is: 1) should I spend $60-$90 on a 1 or 2 gig card that I will only need once or 2) do I really need to be shooting at such a large file size and will I be OK stepping down to Medium/Fine where I can still probably print out 8x10's if I want to, but will also be able to get about an extra 500 shots by doing so.

From you guys, I'm looking for pros and cons of both options. I have the cash to get the card if I feel its justified, but I hate dropping $60-$90 on a one time need. But I do like to manipulate my pictures (crop, levels, curves, etc in photoshop) and the higher quality pixels you are starting with the better. There is also the possibility that with DS9, DS6 & DD5 that I won't have time to take as many pictures as I think and I might not even need the extra memory.

Any thoughts?

 

[Kelly Grannell]

You can print around 20" x 30" with your camera. I've printed 20" x 30" with my 10D and my 300D (6MP) for commercial print (if you've been to Bestbuy and see certain manufacturer's posters and home theatre in the box in the past 4 years, you've seen my work).

I personally would rather use Large/Normal than Medium/Fine because when you set it to Medium, it only records at 4 MP instead of 8 MP. This is for most shots. But when you get to scenes where there are lots of tiny little details, Medium Fine will look better at 8x10 than Large Normal.

Confused yet? I know I used to (to the point I had to write a cheat sheet and refer to it for the first couple of days of for-hobby shooting).

 

[mabas9395]

Wouldn't there be lots of tiny little detail at Disneyland so would Med/Fine be better?

What are your rules of thumb for using Large vs Medium vs RAW?

Thanks.

 

[Anewman]

The way I understood most cameras file settings, it may help you decide.

Large/medium/small refer to number of pixels, it varies by make but first value in setting almost always refers to image size.

Extrafine/fine/normal/standard/etc(almost always the second value), refer to level of Jpeg compression.

I would rather have 4 good quality(not overly compressed) megapixels vs 8 megapixels full of jpeg artifacts(overly compressed), when printing at 4x6. Opinions vary, but at 4x6 prints much of the detail would not be visible anyways while Artifacts around that detail maybe.

 

[Kelly Grannell]

True, although my eyes can't see the difference between fine vs normal on an 8x12 print whereas I can see the difference between 4MP vs 8MP.

Like Anewman said, opinions will vary.

 

[boBQuincy]

You bought the camera, now buy the cards to feed it!

When that once in a lifetime photo comes along you want to be sure your camera is in RAW, and since you never know when it will be, buy the cards and shoot in the best mode you have available.

Btw, a RAW image has about 16 times the information that a jpeg has (12 bits compared to 8) so if you want to work with levels and curves this gives you the data to do it with.

Of course that's easy for me to say, it's not my money, but I do practice what I preach and rarely shoot in jpeg anymore. And I do wish I had some of my older images in RAW...


boB

 

[mabas9395]

You know boBQuincy, my wife says the same things about our three kids; We had 'em, not we got to feed them (and clothe them and house them, etc, etc, etc)

I've heard this advice about lenses; You don't buy an expensive dSLR and then put cheap glass in front of it. So I guess the same is true for memory/image quality; you don't buy an expensive dSLR and then "cheap out" on the image quality due to lack of memory.

Thanks for your help. Just ordered another 2gb Sandisk Ultra II. That makes 5gb for 3-1/2 days at DLR. Plus the wife's P&S so she can get a few pictures of me. I think that should be enough.

 

[Kelly Grannell]

That should be more than enough, especially if you take pictures the old-school way (compose in your mind, then shoot).