Does size matter?

[Keith8]

What resalution should I shoot at?
I print 4x6 I have a 3.3 Meg camera.
Olympus C3040

[Keith8]

What resalution should I shoot at?
I print 4x6 I have a 3.3 Meg camera.
Olympus C3040

[Nancy S]

Keith8,

I am not understanding resolution in terms of taking a picture.

Take the very best quality picture your camera can give you. Some cameras have choices like; good, better, best.

It probably won't hurt anything to have your camera store it on your card as a high quality jpg. But as soon as you transfer your images to your desktop, you will want to save them in the .psd format to preserve all the quality.

[Mac McDougald]

Always grab as many original pixels as possible.
In your case 3.3 million of them :-)

Mac

[Leen Koper]

I agree with Nancy and Mac, but if your intention is to store as many images on the same card as possible you should do a little math.
Suppose you will print at 300 ppi without resampling, you will need:
length 6x300=1800 pixels
width 4x300=1200 pixels
This makes 1200x1800 =about 2 megapixel for each image.
If you don't mind upsampling up to 4x you might be able to shoot at 1800/4 x 1200/4 = 450x300= 0.135 megapixel. If you shoot JPEG high quality you will be able to reduce the size to about 0.02 megapixel.
Buy a 1 Gb storage card and you will be able to store 50.000 images on a single card.
If you print at 150 dpi even 4x more.
I suppose this should do for a weekend break.

Leen

[Peter Duniho]

"Leen Koper" <leenkoper@zeelandnet.nl> wrote in message
news:2ccd2f51.2@webx.la2eafNXanI...

> I agree with Nancy and Mac, but if your intention is to store as
> many images on the same card as possible you should do a little math.
> [...]
> If you don't mind upsampling up to 4x you might be able to shoot at
> 1800/4 x 1200/4 = 450x300= 0.135 megapixel. If you shoot JPEG
> high quality you will be able to reduce the size to about 0.02 megapixel.

Your intentions are good, and the basic idea is right, but there's some
incorrect information in your message.

The main thing is that you're equating pixels with bytes. They aren't the
same. Uncompressed, a 3.3 megapixel image is actually about 10 megabytes,
since each pixel is actually 24 bits (three bytes). The other problem is
that JPEG compression depends on not only the level of compression, but also
the nature of the image (i.e. how much detail vs large areas of similar
pixels). You mention the former, but not the latter.

I have found it's easiest to just let the camera do the work for you. Put
an empty card in. Set the camera to a resolution you're considering. See
how many pictures the camera says will fit. Because of the variability in
how much the picture can actually be compressed, the camera's estimate will
be off by a few pictures one way or the other, but then doing the math by
hand has the same problem.

But the fundamental point you're making is correct. Normally, one would
want to shoot at the maximum resolution and image quality possible, but the
issue of how many pictures will fit on a memory card may affect one's
willingness to compromise on image quality.

By the way, just as a "for example", on my camera the visual difference
between maximum quality (basically no compression) and the next notch down
is practically indistinguishable, but twice as many pictures can fit using
the lower quality setting.

Pete

[Leen Koper]

Pete, you are right. I knew something was wrong, but now instead of 50.000 he store just only 50.000/3 =16.667 images.
I hope this won't be a major dissappointment. ;-)

I have no experience with shooting in less than maximum quality, but I'm pleasantly surprised to experience how good the bicubic upsampling is. I've sold and displayed quite some wall portraits at 50x75 cm sizes (20x30 inches) since I went digital. All these images were made with the Fuji S2 DSLR. One thing I learned however: digital is extremely critical, so only the best lenses will be able to do the job in a proper way.
As Canon shows, digital SLR cameras will become much cheaper, but lenses will be the next issue.

Leen

[Peter Duniho]

"Leen Koper" <leenkoper@zeelandnet.nl> wrote in message
news:2ccd2f51.4@webx.la2eafNXanI...

> I have no experience with shooting in less than maximum quality,
> but I'm pleasantly surprised to experience how good the bicubic upsampling

is.

Note that I'm talking about changing the compression level, not the
resolution.

IMHO, if you're going to make the picture bigger, go with a higher
resolution. You are better off with high compression at a high resolution
than low compression at a low resolution. It's easier to discard
information (which is what happens when you increase the compression) than
it is to add information (which is what happens when you add pixels by
stretching the image to a larger size).

Pete

[Nancy S]

I'm still laughing about this little conversation you two are having. I detected some tongue in cheek from Leen with his first post. I don't let a capacity limitation deter me in the least...I believe in MORE CARDS!!

[Ray]

I'm with you Nancy, especially since the price of these little cards have dropped so low recently.
Last weekend, I shot 180 pictutres with my camera and I used 640Mb of CF cards Luckilly for me,
I have 1152Mb in various sizes.

Ray

[Carl Wegner]

Thanks Nancy. Restored my faith in our PSE forum, can't get too stuffy over here. But I can't find a symbol for "laughing hysterically".

Carl

[Nancy S]

Carl,

I'm glad to hear I provided a chuckle in your day!

[JB the 3rd]

"Peter Duniho" <NpOeStPeAdM@NnOwSlPiAnMk.com> wrote in message
news:1A39869BEFABFF0C4A3ADEB74709AC1B@in.webx.la2e afNXanI...

> The main thing is that you're equating pixels with bytes. They aren't the
> same. Uncompressed, a 3.3 megapixel image is actually about 10 megabytes,
> since each pixel is actually 24 bits (three bytes). The other problem is
> that JPEG compression depends on not only the level of compression, but also
> the nature of the image (i.e. how much detail vs large areas of similar
> pixels). You mention the former, but not the latter.
>
> I have found it's easiest to just let the camera do the work for you. Put
> an empty card in. Set the camera to a resolution you're considering. See
> how many pictures the camera says will fit. Because of the variability in
> how much the picture can actually be compressed, the camera's estimate will
> be off by a few pictures one way or the other, but then doing the math by
> hand has the same problem.

My 3.1 camera will take anywhere from 10 to 35 pictures on "best" setting
depending on how big the files are. They can be from 250K to 1.5M, so your
mileage *will* vary day to day. This is for the 15M internal memory.

I always have mine set on "best" and always recommend it. You can always make
a lesser quality copy if you need to but you can't improve the quality ever. I
also bought two 128M memory cards @ 39. each. They hold over 150 best quality
pictures (each) so I have plenty of memory. I went on a 10 day trip to Alaska
and had a little room to spare when I got home.

Jim

> But the fundamental point you're making is correct. Normally, one would
> want to shoot at the maximum resolution and image quality possible, but the
> issue of how many pictures will fit on a memory card may affect one's
> willingness to compromise on image quality.
>
> By the way, just as a "for example", on my camera the visual difference
> between maximum quality (basically no compression) and the next notch down
> is practically indistinguishable, but twice as many pictures can fit using
> the lower quality setting.
>
> Pete
>
>

[boogaloonuts]

Thought the message title might help get some attention. :grin; Anyhoo,
someone at work wants to know how big our website is. ??? I have no idea what
to tell him. Where can I find how many gagigabytes our site is eating up?
We use Contribute 3.

Tanx in advance,
Lori

[Ben Bloom]

"How Big" is rather ambiguous. It could mean how many pages, how many
gigabytes, or even how much bandwidth. I would clarify that, first.



boogaloonuts wrote:

> Thought the message title might help get some attention. :grin; Anyhoo,
> someone at work wants to know how big our website is. ??? I have no idea what
> to tell him. Where can I find how many gagigabytes our site is eating up?
> We use Contribute 3.
>
> Tanx in advance,
> Lori
>
>
>

[boogaloonuts]

Hey Ben Bloom,

I referred to gagigabytes in my post, but I suppose that could be misconstrued
as not knowing what I'm talking about. He'd like to know how many
gigabytes/megabytes it is because we're thinking of changing web hosters and
need to know what we need. (The question is so much clearer when he's
standing over my shoulder telling me what he wants.)

Thanks!
Lori :confused;

[Ben Bloom]

Lori,

If your current host has a control panel, you can likely get the
information right there. If not...well... You can FTP into the site and
either download the whole site or use tools built into your FTP program
to determine size.

There's not a convenient way to do this on Contribute that I know of.

-Ben

boogaloonuts wrote:

> Hey Ben Bloom,
>
> I referred to gagigabytes in my post, but I suppose that could be misconstrued
> as not knowing what I'm talking about. He'd like to know how many
> gigabytes/megabytes it is because we're thinking of changing web hosters and
> need to know what we need. (The question is so much clearer when he's
> standing over my shoulder telling me what he wants.)
>
> Thanks!
> Lori :confused;
>