Eagle Posted March 1, 2008 Share Posted March 1, 2008 Now that we have my wife's new monitor squared away ... she's leaving in a couple of days for a trip. She wants to take photos on the trip, with the idea of possibly doing a book about travel in the area where she'll be headed. The issue is how to maximize the number of digital photos she can store on the camera's memory card while maintaining sufficient resolution to produce acceptable prints when blown up to 8x10. The camera offers four resolutions. That much I can figure out -- more resolution = finer "grain" ==> better enlargements. But, larger file size. The camera also offers, for each resolution, a choice of "standard," "fine," or "extra fine." For the moment, I have the camera set for the highest resolution, and "standard" mode. I'm certain the resulting picture quality would be even better if I were to go to "fine" or "extra fine," but we don't want to get into multiple cards, fo a variety of reasons. So the name of the game is to make the best use of the 1GB card that's in the camera. Are we better off using the highest resolution and "standard" mode, or would the results be better (and number of photos stored greater) if we dropped the resolution one step and switch to "fine" mode? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SuperWade2 Posted March 1, 2008 Share Posted March 1, 2008 I'm no expert... but have taken 20,000-30,000 digital photos over the past 5 or 6 years when I got my first digital camera. With the price of memory, I would rather spend the extra $ or whatever to take a bunch of extra memory cards and record in the absolute max resolution my cameras will support. While I "might" never need a Full Raw 8/10/12 Megapixal image, who knows, maybe I will and who knows if I will ever return to the location where I took the pics...doesn't take up much space, or hard to keep track of. At one time when memory sticks were more cost prohibitive, I would maybe recommended sizing down, but now a few extra cards is cheap insurance to make sure you have the most options later when working with your pics. For my Canon Digital SLR, I have (2) 8 GB Seagate CF Hard Drives (I do work for them, so a semi shameliess plug), (1) 1 GB and (1) 512 MB. For my Canon PnS Digi, I have a could 4 GB SD Cards and my Sony PnS and HD Camcorder, I have a 4 GB Memory stick for each of those. Go Highest Res and Extra Fine setting and pick up some more memory to have her take with her on her trip... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pete M Posted March 1, 2008 Share Posted March 1, 2008 Memory is cheap. I would get a 2 gig for in the camera and carry the 1 gig as backup. Heck, the 4 gig cards aren't all that much anymore either. one of those and you should be pretty set for life. :D Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SuperWade2 Posted March 1, 2008 Share Posted March 1, 2008 Memory is cheap. I would get a 2 gig for in the camera and carry the 1 gig as backup. Heck, the 4 gig cards aren't all that much anymore either. one of those and you should be pretty set for life. :D Depending on the type 4 GB Cards are like $30-40 ... 8 GB CF Cards are like $75 if you camera supports that... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eagle Posted March 1, 2008 Author Share Posted March 1, 2008 Go Highest Res and Extra Fine setting and pick up some more memory to have her take with her on her trip... I'm certain the resulting picture quality would be even better if I were to go to "fine" or "extra fine," but we don't want to get into multiple cards, fo a variety of reasons. So the name of the game is to make the best use of the 1GB card that's in the camera. Thank you for taking the time to answer, but you completely ignored the parameters of the question. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SuperWade2 Posted March 1, 2008 Share Posted March 1, 2008 Go Highest Res and Extra Fine setting and pick up some more memory to have her take with her on her trip... I'm certain the resulting picture quality would be even better if I were to go to "fine" or "extra fine," but we don't want to get into multiple cards, fo a variety of reasons. So the name of the game is to make the best use of the 1GB card that's in the camera. Thank you for taking the time to answer, but you completely ignored the parameters of the question. I didn't ignore it, I just disagree with the limitation you've set for yourself...it seems silly, to me, IMHO, to only take (1) 1 GB stick and expect to get all your pics on there and then worry about if you have enough storage to save the files...which I still recommend you take at the highest resolution and quality settings your camera offers regarless of your print size intentions or the size of your memory cards (or card in your case). Sw2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eagle Posted March 1, 2008 Author Share Posted March 1, 2008 I didn't ignore it, I just disagree with the limitation you've set for yourself...it seems silly, to me, IMHO, to only take (1) 1 GB stick and expect to get all your pics on there and then worry about if you have enough storage to save the files...which I still recommend you take at the highest resolution and quality settings your camera offers regarless of your print size intentions or the size of your memory cards (or card in your case). Sw2 How would you like it if people responded to your MJ questions with non-answers because they disagree with your parameters? I understand your points very well, and I knew that a bigger memory card would offer a lot, but that's why I specifically asked how to optimize what we have. I need an answer to the question I asked. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Super_MJ Posted March 1, 2008 Share Posted March 1, 2008 Go Highest Res and Extra Fine setting and pick up some more memory to have her take with her on her trip... I'm certain the resulting picture quality would be even better if I were to go to "fine" or "extra fine," but we don't want to get into multiple cards, fo a variety of reasons. So the name of the game is to make the best use of the 1GB card that's in the camera. Thank you for taking the time to answer, but you completely ignored the parameters of the question. I didn't ignore it, I just disagree with the limitation you've set for yourself...it seems silly, to me, IMHO, to only take (1) 1 GB stick and expect to get all your pics on there and then worry about if you have enough storage to save the files...which I still recommend you take at the highest resolution and quality settings your camera offers regarless of your print size intentions or the size of your memory cards (or card in your case). Sw2 IMO, it's better to take 4 1GB cards then a single 4GB card just because those things are not so reliable, secondary reason would be speed of download. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SuperWade2 Posted March 1, 2008 Share Posted March 1, 2008 I didn't ignore it, I just disagree with the limitation you've set for yourself...it seems silly, to me, IMHO, to only take (1) 1 GB stick and expect to get all your pics on there and then worry about if you have enough storage to save the files...which I still recommend you take at the highest resolution and quality settings your camera offers regarless of your print size intentions or the size of your memory cards (or card in your case). Sw2 How would you like it if people responded to your MJ questions with non-answers because they disagree with your parameters? I understand your points very well, and I knew that a bigger memory card would offer a lot, but that's why I specifically asked how to optimize what we have. I need an answer to the question I asked. To answer the question, if I were given the limitations you outlined in your original post, I would use the highest resolution and "standard" mode if it were me... Altohugh you didn't mention the total # of MegaPixals the camera has... I've seen recommendations of full 2240x1680 - 4 Megapixel to 2560x1920 - 5 Megapixel for printing full photo quality 8x10" images (which you indicated was the likely top end print size). Assuming no cropping if you had a 7/8/10 MegaPixal camera, then you could feasibly drop the resolution down a notch and still be in the 4/5mp range and be OK for 8x10 prints and therefore possibly bump the compression back up to fine and still maybe hold more pics on your 1 gb stick... http://www.bhphotovideo.com/FrameWork/c ... Popup.html http://www.wfu.edu/~matthews/misc/graph ... sComp.html I apologize for editorializing too much into your question...it won't happen again... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mfpdm Posted March 1, 2008 Share Posted March 1, 2008 Well, you camera's manual should give you some sort of idea how many pictures at what resolution the 1GB card can hold. If not, look at it this way. Set the camera at it's best resolution and take a couple of pic's, down load them and see how big the file size is. Now if it's 1 meg, then you could take roughly 1024 pic's, 2 meg is 512, 3 meg 341, 4 meg 256, 5 meg 204, you get the idea. So based on 1 GB = 1024 Meg's, even if they were 5 Meg's each, 204 photo's is a lot for one trip. That is unless it's like a month long. :cheers: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Twisty Posted March 1, 2008 Share Posted March 1, 2008 I have a 4MP digital camera, and with a 1gb stick, I can fit about 300-400 pics on the card with the highest setting. Eagle, why don't you and your wife take some pictures of detailed things, such as a pine tree or a rug on different settings and compare them under magnification. See if you can use "fine" instead of "super fine" You might not notice a difference, and it could save 512kb-1mb per pic. Just a thought. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eagle Posted March 1, 2008 Author Share Posted March 1, 2008 Time is the issue (aside from money, which is also an issue). She leaves Monday, and she just sprung this "Maybe I'll do a book" thing on me. My wife is great on ideas and sudden bursts of initiative ... but she's rather short on follow-through. Obviously, at this point there is no book, there is no contract, and there is no publisher. So we have no idea what format or compression a hypothetical publisher might want, and because money is tight I don't feel we can afford to throw dollars we don't have into memory cards to store more pictures for a book that will most likely never get beyond the "I think I'd like to do a book" stage. On the other hand, she won't be able to go back and re-shoot unacceptable pictures if the book accidentally becomes a reality. Hence, I need to optimize the use of what the available equipment offers, and we don't have time to take test photos and then get them printed out to see what's acceptable and what's not. As to the old RTFM -- I wish that were possible, but the instruction manual is in Greek ... as well as being in Greece. (No, I'm not kidding. It's a long story.) It's a Minolta Dimage A1, 5 megapixel. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mfpdm Posted March 1, 2008 Share Posted March 1, 2008 Nice camera. Those aren't cheap. So here's a link to the manual so you can have it in the future. http://ca.konicaminolta.com/support/man ... index.html Right click and save it. It will be a lot quicker. So acording to the chart on page 83 of this owners manual, at 2560 x 1920, using extra fine, the average file size is 4.9 meg. So with that the 1GB card can hold approx. 200 pics. edit: If you set the camera up to the different settings, the frame counter will tell you how many pic's can be taken at that setting. :cheers: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eagle Posted March 1, 2008 Author Share Posted March 1, 2008 Thankyouthankyouthankyouthankyou ... An instruction book. God is good! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jtdesigns Posted March 1, 2008 Share Posted March 1, 2008 Time is the issue (aside from money, which is also an issue). She leaves Monday, and she just sprung this "Maybe I'll do a book" thing on me. My wife is great on ideas and sudden bursts of initiative ... but she's rather short on follow-through. Obviously, at this point there is no book, there is no contract, and there is no publisher. So we have no idea what format or compression a hypothetical publisher might want, and because money is tight I don't feel we can afford to throw dollars we don't have into memory cards to store more pictures for a book that will most likely never get beyond the "I think I'd like to do a book" stage. On the other hand, she won't be able to go back and re-shoot unacceptable pictures if the book accidentally becomes a reality. Hence, I need to optimize the use of what the available equipment offers, and we don't have time to take test photos and then get them printed out to see what's acceptable and what's not. As to the old RTFM -- I wish that were possible, but the instruction manual is in Greek ... as well as being in Greece. (No, I'm not kidding. It's a long story.) It's a Minolta Dimage A1, 5 megapixel. Man when you said she was making a book I though like a scrap book.! I mean that sounds like what my mom would do, go on a trip and collect pictures and lil tad bits and put them all in order of her trip with some pictures... Not a dang published book with like a copywrited and all that.... :oops: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eagle Posted March 1, 2008 Author Share Posted March 1, 2008 Yeah, she means a real book. She'll be going to an area of her native country that doesn't see much tourism and she wants to do "the" book on the region. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fiatslug87 Posted March 1, 2008 Share Posted March 1, 2008 Just some added information since what you’re really interested in is how the picture looks after printing. For final resolution at 300ppi (current industry standard) a print size of: 8x6 requires 4.3 Megapixels (or 12x9 at 200ppi) 10x6.5 requires 6.0 Megapixels (or 15x10 at 200ppi) 11.5x8.5 requires 8.75 Megapixels (or 17.5x12.5 at 200ppi) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Twisty Posted March 2, 2008 Share Posted March 2, 2008 Eagle, when I said take sample pictures I didnt mean get them printed. I assumed you had a card reader (perhaps I am wrong) hooked up to your computer. If you do have a reader, you can just pull the pics off of the card and preview them on the computer. Use Microsoft Image Viewer to zoom into the pics and get a closer look at the detail. At least thats what I do when I take pics. It'll be easier now that you have the manual. Good luck! ;) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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