Save in High Quality
Posted Wednesday, March 28th, 2007 · Permalink
This one’s a simple tip that can help you greatly in the long-run. When you’re doing those once-in-a-lifetime trips, do yourself a favor and save your photography in the highest quality possible. Now that doesn’t mean that all those high-end cameras should be set to capture in RAW format (huge file-sizes), but set them to the highest quality .JPG save with the highest resolution possible.
Why? Let me show you why…
Memory is cheap and only getting cheaper. Having only a 128 megabyte card with you on a trip is not an excuse anymore. Bring a few gigabytes with you and, when in the larger cities, get your stuff transferred to two CD-ROMs with one copy going home and one for in your luggage.
The benefits are often only aparent upon return. It’s difficult to tell the quality differences between the high and low settings on your camera’s small LCD screen. But trust me, the quality difference is huge and it’s worth it. So many friends of mine have complained about the picture quality after printing. The fact of the matter is that printing needs a much higher quality picture to look good when compared to computer screen resolution. And many people still love having an actual developed picture in their hands rather than looking at a computer screen.
I, for one, know that if I hadn’t saved at the highest quality setting when traveling through Asia this summer, I wouldn’t have been able to make a book like A First Experience.
And remember, you can always down-sample your images (for the web or in emails to friends), but you can never increase the quality. Once it’s captured, the moment has passed, and whatever is saved on that memory card is what you’re stuck with!
Responses feed2 Responses ↓
1Mike // March 29th, 2007 at 9:22 pm
This seems like an obvious tip, Timen, but I think most people don’t even give the default resolution of their digital cameras a second thought. Or they simply don’t understand the difference. My 7 megapixel camera came out of the box with photos set to take at 5 megapixels. Why, I have no idea.
Thanks for the tip!
2Timen // March 29th, 2007 at 10:09 pm
Hey Mike,
You’ve got a point. The problem is that all the major camera manufacturers all advertise with the magapixels, yet so many people don’t actually use those megapixels that the cameras afford them. After it’s sold, it’s only taking 2/3 or what’s possible, which is a shame.
Thanks for your comment.
Leave a Response