Jpeg vs image size relationships. . . .

I'm trying to better understand the relationship between Image QUALITY and image SIZE in terms of sharpness/quality of my pics.

I went to burn my D600 images on a regular CD disk. I used to be able to get nearly 250 images on a disk at a time with my now gone, D40. Now, with the D600, I can't even get close to getting 250 images on a CD at a time. I looked back at my D40 image sizes and recognized that they were MUCH smaller than my D600's larger image size.

So here I am. A family guy who shoots mostly family shots and travel shots. I shoot for fun and am getting back into photography slowly, especially the digital end of it.

I have my D600 set to "Image Quality BASIC and Image Size SMALL". So my question is, WHAT SHOULD I be setting it to?
Am I short-cutting the D600's powers buy shooting in BASIC and SMALL? I'm not wanting to get 250 images on a disk at a time, but 125 would be nice as a back-up to saving on my external hard drive.

Please explain how size and quality work together/against one another so I can agent the most out of my D600. Which one is more important as far as pic quality is concerned? Quality or size?

Thanks, sorry for such a long-winded question. Any help would be great.

More megapixels mean more space required. You just need bigger faster disks I guess. As far as settings I would get away from the BASIC/SMALL setting and utilize the power of the camera.

"So here I am. A family guy who shoots mostly family shots and travel shots. I shoot for fun and am getting back into photography slowly, especially the digital end of it."

What you say there says a lot. Give it some time and work on it. Good family and travel pictures are worth the effort.

not sure why to buy a D600 with 24 Meg FX sensor and then use Basic and small? are you shooting saving RAWS? if not, you are barely using the quality of your SLR..

Most save images on dual harddrives.

The question I'd like you to answer is: Why is cd burning so important to you. With the new usb portable drives that are really affordable, I don't understand why you'd still want to use cd technology that is so limiting as far as picture size. You can buy 2 portable hard drives 1Tb each and then use the camera's full resolution. If CDs are for sharing pictures, think about usb memory sticks that are very cheap. It doesn't take much time to transfer pictures you want to share on a stick that can be viewed on a HD tv screen and I find it much user friendly than the cd.

But this is only my personal point of view. You may have your very good reasons too.

I always use the camera in RAW+Jpegs (medium-large) just to make my selections quicker. I then keep only the raw files and photoshop copies.

From a very recent experience with photo storage, I'm still hooked on burning the files to DVDs.

I've dropped a few CDs/DVDs and they still work. Can't say that for many HDDs.
The bonus is that any computers with an optical drive can still read the disks so I don't have to worry about USB caddies etc.

I've still got the first backup CD I ever burned from 1998 and it reads great.

Back then I had a 2x speed SCSI burner in which you had to put the CD into a caddie and then the caddie into the drive.

That and you had to turn off all other programs and screen savers so you didn't get buffer under-runs. Yeah, don't miss those buffer under-run errors...

*I've been a computer tech for way to long to trust spindle drives. I've had a few USB flash drives which have failed and you can't read anything from them.

I have a box full of negatives and just as many CD's because when I process I have them scanned to disk (really marginal scans it kind of sucks but it is what it is)...plus I have them posted all over Egypt...someday I am going to make a great snap! LOL

Hey Jetspeed, Just realised I've hijacked your thread...

I'd be shooting in the highest setting your camera can do, otherwise you're under utilising it.

That being said, it's up to you to figure out if you're happy with the quality of the lower settings and keep using it if you are.

So lets assume that I shoot large then.

WHAT JPEG mode are you all using and WHY? Fine, Normal, or Basic?

NO worries about the hi-jack, any info is good to me.

jetspeed said:

So lets assume that I shoot large then.

WHAT JPEG mode are you all using and WHY? Fine, Normal, or Basic?

NO worries about the hi-jack, any info is good to me.

Click to expand...

I'd say it all depends on what you want the images for, specifically how large you want to print them. If your only goal is to watch them on a computer or tv screen, I'd say it really does not matter.

Me, I take my pictures with raw and jpeg medium fine. But I mainly use the raw files because I can recover the highlights and manage the color temperature better.

I shoot in RAW because I like to be able to play around with my photos on my computer. Shooting in RAW gives me a lot more options.

When I was given my D80, I played around with it, but mostly stayed on the safe settings of 'Auto' and 'Program' and shot in JPG.

This was because I didn't understand the manual settings. And this RAW mode was saving 10MB size images when I could use JPG and have them only be around 4.5MB.

Then one day I found a photo editor that could read RAW files and was stunned at what more I could do to correct and adjust my photos.

When you edit a JPG file, you're loading a compressed image and information and detail is already lost. When editing a RAW file, you have as much information as the sensor can give you and it's the program you're using to edit that will would probably limit you.

I think of RAW files as a 'digital negative'; you use a negative to create a photograph and you can do a lot of adjustments without losing quality.

JPG files are like the instant photographs you get from a polaroid camera. Once you've clicked the shutter button you've got what's there.

On the issue of storage, drive space is not an issue for me. Storage is cheap and getting cheaper. I have four spare 1 terrabyte drives sitting in my desk drawer I'll be putting into a server I'm building.

All my digital photos I've taken since 2002 add up to 58GB, and I can back them up on 13 DVDs which cost around $0.30 each.

I burn two copies of each disk and store the second copy at my parent's place. I live in an old house with old electric wiring.