D5000 image size?

dutchie

Senior Member
Hello just wondering what most people shoot in.
Large or medium size images?
I always assumed that bigger is better.
I shoot in fine and large, but had read somewhere that it is sometimes better to shoot in medium size?
May be a stupid question but is there any truth to that?


Newbie question.

thanks,
Chris
 

AC016

Senior Member
Use all the megapixels that your camera has. Unless you want to save space on your SD card, go with large. Unfortunately, you have opened up the can of worms a bit and i am sure that someone is going to come along and say the "R" word.... oh well.
 

Marcel

Happily retired
Staff member
Super Mod
There is no such thing as a stupid question.

I really don't see why it would be preferable to use less than the camera was built to give. If you want sharp pictures that will make nice enlargements, use RAW+Large<Fine. You can use the jpegs if they are good but if there is something that needs real fixing up, then raw has more information about the picture.
 

stmv

Senior Member
my D700, has the hot botton right on top to change quality right next to the ISO button,, Have accidently changed the quality from RAW/FINE to basic, while changing the ISO!

more like GRRRRR,, take some shots, and then find out only JPEG BASIC... once after 2 hours in POMPEII!! I would love to map over that button.
 

dutchie

Senior Member
Thanks for all the replies.
myself I could not see the benefit of using less ...but hey you never know.
It makes total sens e to use the camera to its max.

As for RAW is there a good free program for editing raw?

Thanks agian.
 

fotojack

Senior Member
Well I'm not ashamed to say I shoot in jpeg most of the time..medium fine. Unless I'm shooting for a client, there is absolutely nothing wrong with jpeg. Are you shooting to make a living? Enlarging pictures? Practicing your Photoshop skills? If not, then why not use jpeg? Uploading to forums or Flickr or other web sites.....jpeg does the trick just fine. :)
 

dutchie

Senior Member
I am just shooting for fun.I would starve if I had to make a living doing this.My only claim to fame is a pic I took at a local paintball field was taken from my facebook page and used as and advertising pic for a action photo contest by RAP4 paintball in California.They said it was a royalty free image.....whatever.kinda cool to think my pic was good enough for their contest poster.they did edit me a copy so I could print a poster for my son who is in the pic.2 mb pic ended up being 215 mb tif.
 

stmv

Senior Member
Well I'm not ashamed to say I shoot in jpeg most of the time..medium fine. Unless I'm shooting for a client, there is absolutely nothing wrong with jpeg. Are you shooting to make a living? Enlarging pictures? Practicing your Photoshop skills? If not, then why not use jpeg? Uploading to forums or Flickr or other web sites.....jpeg does the trick just fine. :)

I typically start my edit off the JPEG (just find it faster), unless I messed up right from the start and need to make temperature or other changes like in the shadows or such where the raw has more latitude, but lots of my prints are right from the JPEG, then, when I really like a shot, I'll edit off raw, trying to beat my JPEG edit, Would say 70% of the time, RAW edit source will beat out the JPEG, but with the newest camera,, seems like the JPEG results are getting better and better.
 

wgrube

New member
Almost every photo of mine is intended for the web, and I use large/fine quality and crop the interesting part of the picture adjusting the framing and resize the result. I rarely use RAW, only in difficult light. For RAW developing I use Darkroom (Linux!!!).
At the time when I had only a few small SD-cards, I used medium size to save space, but was always disappointed with the results. I don't recommend it, unless you're running out of memory...
Anyway, it depends on the final use of the pics, the size and number of SD-cards and how long you must keep the pics on the cards. You can also use the camera connected to your computer (Nikon has a nice software for this, but only for Windows. For linux there's "Entangle" and is still under development, but works great!), so you can forget about memory space and use every pixel your camera offers! ;)
 

Horoscope Fish

Senior Member
If I plan on doing any post-processing at all (besides cropping I suppose) I shoot in RAW. If I'm not going to be doing any post processing I shoot JPG "Large". Just something to remember... You can always go from larger to smaller, from more detail and such to less, but you can't add it if it's not there in the original.
 
I used to only shoot JPEG and was pretty pleased with the results I got but recently I have started shooting in RAW + JPEG Fine. I have found that the extra RAW files do come in handy when that perfect photo needs just a little extra nudge.

Cards are cheap now. Just buy a few extra to throw in the bag.
 
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