[at-l] Last Digital Camera Questions

[papabear.nyc@xxxxxxxxxxx (Papa Bear)]

Jan Leitschuh wrote:
>Okay, my Trail camera should come next week, my first digital. With
>any luck, I'll bring it to the Ruck and "practice." Watch out!
>

>I'm ready to buy Compact Flash cards.
>So...
>1) Is 128 a decent size? How many pix might it hold on best resolution
>(3MP camera)
<cut>

Jan

I would suggest you consider a lesser resolution.  I also have a 3 Mpix
camera but I have set the resolution to 1024x768.  With this resolution I
would get about 400 shots on the 128 Meg card (of course use JPEG).
(Actually I have 64 Meg cards since I have last year's model and I get 200
shots on them).  Check the Gallery on Ryan's site.  Most pictures are taken
at somewhere between 1024x768 and 1600x1200.  Photos scanned on home type
(i.e. cheap) scanners are usually worse than any of these settings.

For example I use 1024x768 (0.8 Mpix)
http://gallery.backcountry.net/papabear_section_2

Mrs. Gorp uses 1200 x 800 (1 Mpix)
http://gallery.backcountry.net/Damascus-HarpersFerry2002

Chase uses 1280x960 (1.2 Mpix)
http://gallery.backcountry.net/roan

Chomp uses 1600x1200 (1.9 Mpix)
http://gallery.backcountry.net/chompwindriver

(How can you tell?  If it was taken with a digital camera there will be a
link in the upper right labeled "Photo Properties" after you click on an
image.  This will tell all.)

See if you can tell the difference between any of these.  Bet you can't!

The reason being many folks (not all) display and share photos primarily via
email and the web.  Higher resolution is wasted.  Takes longer to write on
the card, longer to upload, download, more space on your hard drive etc.

OTOH, if you will primarily be printing your pictures (make sure you use
good quality photo paper and hopefully you have a good quality ink-jet),
then sure, go with the max resolution.

I suggest when you get your new toy, take a variety of pictures at each
resolution setting it has.  Print them. Eemail them.  Put them up on the
gallery (or just display them on your computer).  It's going to be a trade
off between higher resolution (which you may not even see) and slower,
bigger files.  If I used the full 3 Mpix on my web based stuff, people would
grow old and die while waiting for my web pages to download.

And of course you can take some shots lower res, some higher.

Have fun and report back.

Pb

(bet this is not really your last question)