Digital photo size?

[brad_funk]

I am very new to digital photography, but am having alot of fun

with it.

My question is about digital photo size.

I have a 5.1 mp nikon and have been using it at the largest photo

size. I am truly impressed with the quality on the pc screen and in

printed photos. I am wondering though if i can go to a smaller

picture size, and keep the quality?

The majority of my pictures are looked at only on the pc, but

sometimes i have a few printed, or email them to family.

 

Thanks for any suggestions!

Brad

[k_michael]

The more information you have the better the print. Why would you want to cut down?

[frolickingbits]

You can't keep the quality with a smaller picture size. I would advocate for always shooting at the largest size and highest quality, and buying more memory. That way, if you do decide you want to print a photo, you aren't limited by the quality of your digital file. If you were certain that the photos you were taking were never going to be printed, and you just wanted to take lots of photos, then you could reduce the size, and your photos would still look fine on the screen.

[brad_funk]

Thanks guys!

Makes sence to me, i will get a bigger

memory card and use the largest setting.

 

Brad

[mike_elek]

Brad, get a copy of Picasa software. It has a very nice e-mail function that reduces the file to an acceptable size. It's a Google product, and if you do a Google search, it will come up right away. And also, it's free.

[ron_goodenow]

Brad:

 

It all depends on what you want to do, how long you can go without backing up, and the quality of compression in your camera. While, of course, the higher the resolution the more detail you will capture, there are other factors. I use Olympus cameras (E-300 and 5060) and reviews of them have pointed out that unless shooting in raw there is only a tiny and imperceptible difference between the SHQ and HQ modes -- something I can confirm from heavy experience.

 

On a recent trip out of the country to a very scenic area I generally shot in HQ and only stepped up to SHQ when I was thinking of a large print (something rare for me) or knew that when I got home I would need to do a heavy crop. I prefer triage to just piling on cards and devices. Finally, in my opinion, a lot depends on the quality of the program you use for post processing. I find that some unsharpening, and careful reduction to smaller sizes for web use makes a huge difference, and so I would recommend an investment in Photoshop Elements or an equivalent program rather than in more cards than you may actually need. Of course, be sure to have a good sized memory card (a one gig one is now very affordable), but if you follow discussions in sites like this you will see all kinds of debates about cards, card sizes, backup devices, etc. Many posters here are heavy pros and may not be as sensitive to cost factors and the kind of utilization that are practical to many others. The important thing is to learn by experience -- and have fun doing it.

[jcuknz]

Once you cut the resolution you cannot put it back in and how do you know which photo you are going to print big.

The only safe procedure is to shoot everything at max resolution and get extra storage to permit this.

[Jochen_S]

Take your pictures as big as possible and size them down to your needs. Dump only information that's surely not interesting nobody. Only imaginable exeption: It's at least 200% sure that you don't need the information of a big picture. - Studio job for selling stuff on ebay for example, but maybe you like to rmember what you had by viewing a enlarged detail of such a picture? - a really hard decision for me...