About Photo Resolution

Photo: Mr. Dickie (Lighthouse at Havre de Grace, Maryland)

... I am growing in strength of spirit each day as I seek the guidance of God.
(Colleen Zuck, Daily Word, Day 157)

Worry is interest paid on trouble before it comes due. (William Ralph Inge in At
My Best, 17 August)

I've learned that shooting digital pictures at the highest resolution may not be a good idea. My camera has a number of settings. There are at least two reasons to set the resolution to a lower number of pixels or to the VGA mode.

First, if we aren't planning to enlarge our photos to 11 x 14 or even 8 x 10 it isn't necessary to shoot at 8MP. We can select a lower resolution which will result in smaller files and good 4x6 or 5x7 prints. This can be a good idea when we want to include a photograph in an Email or upload it to the Internet. For example, I can't make the Facebook simple uploader work if the files are big. Changing the resolution before taking the photograph eliminates the upload issue.

Second, taking pictures at a lower resolution increases the number of photos that can be stored on a memory card. For example, at 8Mp my camera will hold 267 photos. In the VGA mode, which is the lowest resolution, the card can hold more than 1,000 pictures.

On another topic. There are two photograph formats: landscape and portrait. Moving a portrait image from your camera to the computer will store the image on its side. That's not suitable for showing to others. There are more than one way to rotate the portrait images. I found that the way that works best for me is to used the camera editing capability before I move the photographs to the computer. This process is very quick and easy while the photos are still in the camera and only the rotated image is saved on the memory card. If the need to rotate the portrait images has been annoying you, investigate whether your camera has the capability to rotate the images while they are still in the camera.

Mr. Dickie