Traveling pics

missrisible

I generally set my camera at the "fine" 8MP setting so that I will have some leeway to blow up to 8 x 10 (minimum) or crop & zoom in without grain (without being so large it uses up the entire card).
We will be travelling (so using internet cafes) and I notice that it really takes time to download these size photos (approx 3264 x 2448) but I'd like to store on smugmug rather than purchasing a bunch of expensive cards. I went throught the "speeding up" section but I'm still not sure what an adequate size would be for bigger prints without compromising the quality too much. I'd hate to arrive home and not have decent quality pics to print.
I'm a smugmug neophyte and haven't ever used an internet cafe so any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Cheers

Richard

missrisible wrote:

. I'd hate to arrive home and not have decent quality pics to print.
I'm a smugmug neophyte and haven't ever used an internet cafe so any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Cheers

I haven't tried this myself, but I believe that many internet cafes and some camera stores let you burn CDs of your .jpg files. This would be a whole lot faster than uploading unless the cafe has a very fast connection.

Just a thought. Welcome to Dgrin, BTW. :

Baldy

My contention is there's too much focus on megapixels and fine versus medium setting, and not enough on adjustments from camera to print, which is what really separates great prints from good ones.

Point me to some examples with 8 megapixels and less, fine and medium, and I'll return some free 8x10s to you. Then you can report back to the forum whether you can tell the difference.

My bet is this is what you'll find:

http://www.smugmug.com/help/print-problems

Thanks,
Baldy

missrisible

Aha!
Pretty simple solution that hadn't even crossed my mind. Thanks!

rsinmadrid wrote:

I haven't tried this myself, but I believe that many internet cafes and some camera stores let you burn CDs of your .jpg files. This would be a whole lot faster than uploading unless the cafe has a very fast connection.

Just a thought. Welcome to Dgrin, BTW. :

missrisible

I thought of doing that and I'm sure you're right; I'm still wondering if there is a minimum setting for decent quality enlargements.
Thanks for the offer...so, if I wanted to see the difference (or NOT see it, as the case may be), where would I send some sample 8 x 10 photos to? I took a bunch of the same object on different settings from 1 mp up to 8 mp; sure can't tell the difference on the screen. But then my eyes aren't what they used to be either -- Maybe that's not such a bad thing
Cheers

Baldy wrote:

My contention is there's too much focus on megapixels and fine versus medium setting, and not enough on adjustments from camera to print, which is what really separates great prints from good ones.

Point me to some examples with 8 megapixels and less, fine and medium, and I'll return some free 8x10s to you. Then you can report back to the forum whether you can tell the difference.

My bet is this is what you'll find:

http://www.smugmug.com/help/print-problems

Thanks,
Baldy

Baldy

missrisible wrote:

if I wanted to see the difference (or NOT see it, as the case may be), where would I send some sample 8 x 10 photos to?

If you just place them in an online album and post a link, I'll fetch them.

Thanks,
Baldy

missrisible

photos
Basically I took the same photo (obviously) at 2, 3, 5 & 8 mp at both "fine" and "normal" settings (not sure why the light changes a bit in them). Then I cropped them with Photoshop to approximately the same size and saved at JPEG 9. I didn't do any other changes. I had named them so it would be easy to see which were which but the names didn't appear to come through in the upload. I suppose the EXIF info would indicate what the settings were although I don't see where the mp info shows up. I figure it just isn't in front of my amateur eyes.
I know you don't need them but I included all the photos (cropped and otherwise) as I didn't know what would be best for the purpose. Is this confusing enough?
BTW - I sure noticed the difference in upload time with the smaller sized files - the time difference just between 5 & 8 mp is pretty big!
Thanks for doing this. I'm really curious to see the results and happy to report back. I'm sure others would be interested as well.
Cheers

Baldy wrote:

If you just place them in an online album and post a link, I'll fetch them.

Thanks,
Baldy

missrisible

Oops - Album link
Of course it helps if you know where to look:

http://missrisible.smugmug.com/gallery/766449/1/33869601

Thanks

Baldy wrote:

If you just place them in an online album and post a link, I'll fetch them.

Thanks,
Baldy