pixels, pixels, pixels

philstar

Is it really necessary to have your camera at the highest pixel setting, cause to be honest with you i can't see any difference between say 3m and 5m photos that i have taken.

The only difference is picture dimensions and file size.

Borderfox

Its not necessary

minikin

it makes no sense to shoot at less than full resolution, why didn't you just buy a cheap 3mp camera instead?
There'll come a time when you look back and go "that'd make a nice A4..., if only it were higher resolution"

Shiny

Yep, always take it at the highest quality possible.

In ten years time you might want to use the photo
and wish you had taken it at full size.

Storage is cheap (both Flash and hardrive) so there is really
no excuse to use the lower quality setting.

rahtkennades

As Shiny says, Solid-state memory is dirt cheap these days (relatively), so it doesn't make sense not to shoot at full res all the time. If you're worried about running out of space, just by another CF/SD card.
Basically, why not?

rymus

as we've seen on here before a few times.. sometimes people take photos at low res because they dont understand. They come out with maybe an 800x600 image tops, it looks grand on screen so they forget about it. Flash forward six months and then then want to make a 10x8 out of it. You'll get one, but it'll be crap. Shoot in top res now, anything lower and you might as well have a camera phone.

lalalalinda

Are megapixels really important when buying the camera? Like, how much is enough? I'm thinking of getting an SLR in the 6MP region. Enough?

magicbastarder

should be plenty. the quality difference between 6 and 8 MP is fairly small, really.

philstar

so what you people are basically saying is....the difference will be seen in the print outs, not necessarily the pc screen.....yes??

Fionn

yes a photograph at 72 dpi is grand for the screen - it'll look very sharp and clear and all but if it's going to be printed at, say for instance 600 dpi the result will be disappointing. The greater the resolution the sharper the print image will appear. Not to be confused by the megapixels on the sensor what determines for the most part resolution here is the size of the sensor as opposed to the amount of pixels.
Small low res photographs are perfect for web graphics actually almost essential because of download time/size but for print the higher the res generally speaking the better!!

Zillah

philstar wrote:

so what you people are basically saying is....the difference will be seen in the print outs, not necessarily the pc screen.....yes??

Depends on what you're doing on the screen, but generally, yes.

Borderfox

Last months Professional Photographer did a test between a load of Nikons eg D80, D200, D2Hs and the D2Xs and nobody could tell the difference between any of them pirnted at a3 size. Dont forget the D2Hs is 4mp, I realise its a pro spec but still.

JMcL

philstar wrote:

so what you people are basically saying is....the difference will be seen in the print outs, not necessarily the pc screen.....yes??

Yes but with limitations. The more pixels that get packed into a given area, the smaller and more closely packed the pixels will be. This results in an increase in noise in the image, and this will be more noticable the larger the pring. DSLRs have large image sensors so they're fine generally. Compacts have tiny sensors, and 10mp compacts are a marketing led disaster. If looking at a compact, ignore the marketing and look for something around 6mp (if they still make them!)

However, as others have said, there's nothing to be gained by using anything less than the full resolution of your particular camera, other that saving a bit of hard disk space

minikin

Last months Professional Photographer did a test between a load of Nikons eg D80, D200, D2Hs and the D2Xs and nobody could tell the difference between any of them pirnted at a3 size. Dont forget the D2Hs is 4mp, I realise its a pro spec but still.

That's because nikon are liars, they've been using the same gelatin and lemon curd based sensors in all their models since 1931.

bigeoino

minikin wrote:

That's because nikon are liars, they've been using the same gelatin and lemon curd based sensors in all their models since 1931.

Thanks minikin!!! Needed that.

(although this does not mean I'm joining the Canon Gang!!!)

in relation to the thread - memory is cheap, dial it up to the max. If you don't you'll regret it as soon as you take that one awesome photo!

mishima

"Yep, always take it at the highest quality possible.

In ten years time you might want to use the photo
and wish you had taken it at full size. "

I remember you said that to me a few years ago! I started doing things differently straight after!

philstar

what does the term "noise" mean??

magicbastarder

you know the way if you tune your TV to a random channel, you get noise?
it's that sort of signal, but weak enough to be only visible in very dark areas of photos at low ISO, and more visible in general at high ISO, where a weak signal has been boosted.

jellybean520

The higher the ISO, the greater the noise so conversely, the lower the ISO, the richer the image quality but that's assuming ideal conditions. Lighting and shutter speed are the other two key variables and if conditions are not ideal sometimes one has to up the ISO. On occasion I've had to use ISO 3200 in order to capture certain situations, typically sports/action at dusk or poorly floodlit. The big compromise here is having 'noise' in the shot, basically a grainy image.

Kilree

Not quite off topic since we're talking about quality but does anyone have a view on shooting in RAW plus jpeg as is possible with the 400D. I know you can mess around with exposure etc but is it worth the rather sizable reduction in card capacity (from 400 approx with jpeg to 100 approx with RAW and jpeg.)

Paulw

Once I started trying RAW I've never looked back. I shoot everything RAW now, except if I really really needed speed shooting.

Kilree

BTW those figures I mentioned relate to a 2gb card.

Kilree

Paul I have seen an appreciable difference on one or two RAW shots when compared to a jpeg of the same subject but generally both RAW and jpeg look the same on screen. Is it in the printed picture where the difference is seen having processed the RAW file and then compressed to jpeg?

Duchovny

Well raw is much better then Jpeg and you have way more ways to work in a RAW picture then in a Jpeg, you can control the colors in a better and easier way, raw is good as well if you change things in the picture and you print it after...

mole2k

I would very very rarely shoot anything other than RAW these days, if filling up your card is a problem just get more! They are cheap after all although I quite often find myself comming back with less shots but more keepers these days unless im shooting at an event.

Kilree

Think I'll try both RAW and jpeg (simultaneous) for a while on the 400d

5uspect

You can just shoot in RAW and then batch save them to JPEGs in photoshop afterwards without any modification. Should save a bit of card space at the expense of power hungry processing time on your PC.

philstar

so how do i set my camera to RAW?? (compact digital)

5uspect

Not all cameras support RAW. Mostly newer dSLRs and the odd compact (tho that was a once off at best)

Kilree

Good idea 5uspect. Should save a bit of space and there's not much point in duplicating. I presume that you can batch process all or a selection. New to this RAW idea and photoshop so this is probably a stupid question.

5uspect

Kilree wrote:

Good idea 5uspect. Should save a bit of space and there's not much point in duplicating. I presume that you can batch process all or a selection. New to this RAW idea and photoshop so this is probably a stupid question.

Not a stupid question at all. You could probably set up a script or action but there's an easier way.

In PS go to file>open and open all your RAW files you want to convert (you have to do it thru the PS dialogue not thru windows). The camera RAW window will open and your images will appear as thumbnails along the left side. Click on one and then hit CTRL+A to select all of them. (BTW when you have multiple files selected any image setting you change in the RAW window applies to all the selected files). So then pick your output options like resolution etc if you want and then click the "Save n files" button where n is the number of files you opened. (this was moved from the left to the bottom right in the latest Camera RAW version)

You'll get a save options dialogue where you can specify batch naming stuff like numbering, folders, file types etc. Click Save.

Click "Done" to close the Camera Raw window and off she goes. Takes a bit of time tho.

Kilree

Great. I think that is the answer. In one of my recent folders of 39 .cr2 files and the same number of .jpegs I would have saved over 150 megs by doing doing it this way. I can't see any downside other than the time it takes to process on PC which actually wasn't too long. I did notice that the processed jpegs were a bit smaller in file size 3.20MB as against 3.74MB in one case for the original so I suppose I must be losing something somewhere although I can't see where.

sineadw

The jpeg file format compresses the image, so that accounts for the smaller file size. You don't lose visible picture quality if you keep the compression level low (I always choose 12 - the higher the number the less compression).

Does that way described above open all the raw files at once? If so it'd be very heavy on the pc. I asked the same question last week and someone (can't remember who - sorry!) showed me a great way to batch convert to Jpeg. Go to file>Scripts>Image Processor... The rest is fairly straightforward You can even run an action on them all while you're at it, resize for the web etc.. And it runs pretty quickly.

elven

Eh, are we talking about shooting in raw just in case you screw up the exposure, and if you get home and they turn out ok you just batch process them to jpg?

Otherwise, what on earth is the point in shooting raw and batch processing to jpg? You'd be as well shooting in jpg in the first place!!!

There's a lot of talk about how raw files are better quality - at the end of the day when you flatten it and save it as a jog it's going to be the same quality as what would have come out of your camera. The huge difference is in the amount of manipulation you can apply to a raw file before getting side effects like posterisation and artifacts, like you would if you were working on a jpg that has already had saturation, sharpening and compression applied. So, raw files are better for people who want to do more messing about with stuff in photoshop, basically...

5uspect

elven wrote:

Eh, are we talking about shooting in raw just in case you screw up the exposure, and if you get home and they turn out ok you just batch process them to jpg?

Otherwise, what on earth is the point in shooting raw and batch processing to jpg? You'd be as well shooting in jpg in the first place!!!

There's a lot of talk about how raw files are better quality - at the end of the day when you flatten it and save it as a jog it's going to be the same quality as what would have come out of your camera. The huge difference is in the amount of manipulation you can apply to a raw file before getting side effects like posterisation and artifacts, like you would if you were working on a jpg that has already had saturation, sharpening and compression applied. So, raw files are better for people who want to do more messing about with stuff in photoshop, basically...

Some people like to have both TBH. You can quickly browse through jpegs on a PC, upload them to the web etc but its great to have the RAWs also for future use. I think lots of people would shoot in RAW+Large.

Shooting an Large+RAW is heavy on camera memory so I just suggested a handy way of quickly processing and saving to jpeg (or any file type for that matter) so you only have to shoot in RAW saving some extra space on the camera.

Opening lots of files in the Camera Raw Window isn't too stressful as long as you don't go thru them individually changing bit and pieces. Opening a bunch and selecting all then saving is almost as fast as a script. A script would be more efficient definitely.

Kilree

sineadw wrote:

The jpeg file format compresses the image, so that accounts for the smaller file size. You don't lose visible picture quality if you keep the compression level low (I always choose 12 - the higher the number the less compression).

Does that way described above open all the raw files at once? If so it'd be very heavy on the pc. I asked the same question last week and someone (can't remember who - sorry!) showed me a great way to batch convert to Jpeg. Go to file>Scripts>Image Processor... The rest is fairly straightforward You can even run an action on them all while you're at it, resize for the web etc.. And it runs pretty quickly.

Sinead, I was making the point that the shot in question was taken both in RAW and jpeg on the camera. When I converted the RAW image into jpeg without any manipulation in photoshop the resulting file size was smaller than the original jpeg taken by the camera. I realise that all jpeg files are compressed. On Elven's point I think that shooting in RAW gives far more options for manipulation on the shots which might require it. On the other hand for those shots that don't need manipulation you can batch process whatever you like into jpeg. Also it is a kind of failsafe if you do get things screwed up on exposure or shooting mode (ie landscape, standard etc.) As far as I can see it's the best of both worlds.