Nikon D7000 settings question

[kgreen]

I have sort of taken a break over the last few months with my picture taking. It's baseball season, & I took a few shots of my son this past week. When reviewing I can see some pretty noticeable grain in the pictures. Where as I never noticed that before. Not sure if it's just me, or if I have changed settings to cause this? The last time I took a lot of pictures was my trip to Yellowstone. I remember turning up the in camera sharpening a bit, wondering if maybe this may have some impact. So I wanted to play around with my settings & see if I had changed something.

I came across kenrockwell website & he goes in depth about what he prefers his settings to be on the d7000. Just playing around here, & I can always do a factory reset. He talks about image Quality, I am not using (RAW), so my options are:
JPEG - fine
JPEG - Normal
JPEG - Basic

I have always set my image quality to JPEG - Fine
He says a lot of people do this, & have files that are bigger than they need to be. The pictures look the same, but take up more space on your memory card and in your computer. What's your recommendations? Do you think it has any effect on image quality if I choose Basic? It would be beneficial for me to save space on my card & computer. However, I would not want to loose quality to do this, if that were to be the case. Just wondering what you have experienced. He appears to be very knowledgeable with the D7000. Thanks

 

[havoc315]

Lower jpeg settings increase compression artifacts. When viewing in small sizes, these are not always noticeable. If you enlarge, pixel peep, crop, or print very large sizes, then compression artifacts become more obvious.

Lets say you are shooting a landscape and the sky is overcast white. A super fine detail jpeg will still go over every pixel of sky and identify the color and details. A highly compressed jpeg will save room with a short cut-- top half of the image is white. This compression of data sometimes creates jagged edges where there is contrast. Where a tree sticks up into the sky-- if you look closely, you'll see jagged edges of the tree where the compression had to change.

 

[kgreen]

Okay I see, that makes sense. I do some cropping, & I may not always print large sizes, but would like to be prepared in case I do. Thinking I'd better stick with JPEG fine, just to be on the safe side. Thanks!

 

[SkaGoat]

Ken's site is good for a lot of things, but his advice on this is very wrong...

if you aren't going to shoot RAW, shoot the highest quality JPEG you can. SD cards and hard drives are cheap, and you are using a $1000 camera, you might as well actually be able to use all the IQ you paid for.

This is why I shoot RAW, I don't want to get home from the Grand Canyon, only to realize I shot the whole trip in the Tungsten WB setting, or with the picture setting set to something I didn't intend. I have hard enough time remembering to reset my ISO to a more reasonable level after shooting something the night before.

 

[kgreen]

Thanks SkaGoat, I will definitely use the highest quality JPEG. I have been shooting JPEG all along. I would like to shoot RAW. I have read a bit & understand the benefits of shooting RAW. I did a couple sample shots in RAW, but once I got them into my editing software. The format wasn't recognized? I have Photoshop elements, & topaz. Not sure how to convert them? I need to read more up on how to do this.

 

[photo_chick]

Ken Rockwell has a lot of advice that's just a little... well not what most of us would consider very good. But hey, whatever works for him.

Always shoot the highest quality your camera is capable of. You never know when you're going to need that extra resolution. 5 or so years ago I could understand the logic in keeping file sizes smaller. Cards used to be so expensive. But these days memory cards and hard drive space are both fairly inexpensive. Go big!

How old is your version of Elements? You may need to update to read your camera's RAW files.

 

[SkaGoat]

Nikon's own software isn't too bad, it'll at least let you turn your .nef (RAW from a Nikon camara) file into 16 bit .tiff files (which are just as good as a RAW file).

 

[kgreen]

Ken Rockwell has a lot of advice that's just a little... well not what most of us would consider very good. But hey, whatever works for him.

Always shoot the highest quality your camera is capable of. You never know when you're going to need that extra resolution. 5 or so years ago I could understand the logic in keeping file sizes smaller. Cards used to be so expensive. But these days memory cards and hard drive space are both fairly inexpensive. Go big!

How old is your version of Elements? You may need to update to read your camera's RAW files.

Yes! I agree go big or go home. And my Elements version is out of date, but it's been my favorite version this far. So I haven't really pushed the idea of upgrading. Although I most likely will sometime. But I bet your right, the newer up to date software will probably be able to handle the RAW files.

 

[kgreen]

Nikon's own software isn't too bad, it'll at least let you turn your .nef (RAW from a Nikon camara) file into 16 bit .tiff files (which are just as good as a RAW file).

Good idea! I remember uploading the Nikon software when I first purchased my camera, but I never used it, or rather never gave it a chance. I'll have to go take a look. Thanks for reminding me

 

[photo_chick]

Yes! I agree go big or go home. And my Elements version is out of date, but it's been my favorite version this far. So I haven't really pushed the idea of upgrading. Although I most likely will sometime. But I bet your right, the newer up to date software will probably be able to handle the RAW files.

Yeah, Adobe has changed the way it handles camera RAW updates the last few years. You can no longer update an out of date version with the latest raw codecs so you have to upgrade at a certain point. Generally if your software predates your camera then you'll have to update (which is usually free) if that version is still current when you get your camera. If they've released a new version of the software then you'll most likely have to pay and upgrade to the current version.

 

[Pixel Dust]

Don't forget, the D7000 can record JPG and RAW simultaneously (and to different cards, too!) You can use the JPG for your immediate needs and save the RAW until you have the appropriate software.

 

[mom2rtk]

Don't forget, the D7000 can record JPG and RAW simultaneously (and to different cards, too!) You can use the JPG for your immediate needs and save the RAW until you have the appropriate software.

I would love to have some of my earlier Jpeg files in RAW to go back and work on now. With the price of memory these days, this sounds like the perfect answer.

I remember spending $80 on my first 1GB CF card. It's a whole new world out there now.