Nikon d3100 image size?
Hi, went out and got the nikon d3100. Not a photographer, not into photography… Just had a new baby and wanted nice pics of her. What should i put the image size setting on in order to get nice pic, not take a lot of space, easy to download, but also get a good clear resolution picture when i want to print.
Always set your camera to the biggest size and best quality, ALWAYS!
Memory cards are cheap, storage is cheap.
Making a COPY OF A PHOTO smaller on your computer is very easy - making it bigger later on is impossible.
Imagine if you just took the best photo but you only have a small one… You'd be kicking yourself, wouldn't you? Having a big file also means you have a bit more room for cropping if you really need to.
Having a baby AND a new camera is worth a bit of effort. Read a few books and a few tutorials on photography, your results will be much better and you will be ever so grateful you have GOOD images of your baby.
You are in sort of a bind.
Any high quality image that will produce nice pictures is going to produce large image files. There needs to be a lot of information in the file in order to create the kind of photos you want, especially when you save them to a DVD so you can show your new babies significant other twenty years from now.
If you were to shoot everything in Small, Basic, you would never be able to make a print larger than about a wallet size. EVER
So, what you do is shoot All your images at full resolution. On your camera that would be Large, Fine. At the end of each shooting day, copy all of them to your computer to a file folder named for your child and the date you took the photos. My granddaughters file folders are Dot112211 when I shot her on the 22nd of November 2011.
Once all the images are safely on your computer, format the memory card using the format feature on your fine D3100. Now you have a fresh memory card for use the next time you and your child go out picture taking.
These image files will be the ones you will put on your USB flash memory device (sometimes called a thumb drive) and take to your local chemists to have prints made (Costco, Sam's Club, CVC, Walgreen's also have these services)
Once you have enough photos on your computer to make a full CD (700 mb) or DVD (4.3 gb) burn a copy to one of those kinds of discs, label them and put them some place safe.
As you have noted, those image will be a little to large to send in quantity to your loved ones or friends. For those images you want to send, you can resize just those to something like 600 x 400 pixels @ 72 ppi. The will make them small enough to send in large quantities using email.
Remember. Save the resized images as a different file name so you do NOT over write your original images.
Most photo programs have what are called 'actions' that allow you to resize image files without having to go through all the steps each time you resize an image.
This will take a little time to get used to doing, but it would be a shame to have such a fine camera that can produce such fine images and relegate it to being a big P&S camera
I always use Large size and Fine quality for every shot I take, be it an NBA game or pictures of my cat. Memory cards are cheap, cheap, and plentiful. The only reason to reduce the size or quality would be if you've run out of room on your memory card and need to squeeze a few more images onto that card.
Always use Large size (you can crop or reduce the size for emailing later)
Always use Fine quality (once an image is captured, you can't improve the quality afterwards)
Always take your photos in color, not black & white (once an image is captured in b&w, you'll never be able to print off a color version, as there's no color info in the image data)
Don't store your photos on the memory card. It's a guaranteed way to have a broken heart when the memory card fails in the future.
Always format the memory card IN the camera before each shoot. That way, the memory card is wiped clean, will last longer, and will be ready for the new images of your beautiful child.
As a photographer, parent, and school teacher, those are my procedures for my cameras.
Got to the highest megapixel rating without going into RAW. Stay at JPEG (JPG) to get more pictures of your bundle of joy. Go easy on the flash. Baby's eyes aren't that developed yet.