Expert: John Oliverio - 10/27/2003

Question
hi john, its andrew again and I would like to thank you for the responce. After you did respond, I did some more research on my own and came to conclusion that JPEG is probably better choce since it takes WAY less memory and it gives faster exposure and capture. But now, I came up with a new question: Let's say that I want to make some 5x7 photos at my local walmart store, then should I choose JPEG or TIFF? Will it make a visible difference on the photos? Also, for clear, non-blurry, good looking 5x7 photos how big should I make the resolution on my camera, 2560 x 1920 , 2048 x 1536 , 1280 x 960 or 640 x 480 ? I'm taking a guess that it would be 2048 x 1536 in fine mode, but please correct me if I'm wrong. I have lots more questions to ask that I don't think are on the manual, so it would be great if you can please recommend any good web sites where I can get some of my questions answered. Thank you so much!

Answer
Andrew,

Hello again.

For most occasions, JPEG would be fine.  I doubt (though I don't know for sure, because I've not been in Wal-Mart) Wal-Mart is set up for TIFF.  As far as how to set your camrea, my rule of thumb is to leave the camera set at the highest resolution and the least compression (highest quality).  I know todays cameras offer a bunch of different resolution settings.  But unless you have a specific need for a smaller file size, I'd leave the camera at the best JPEG settings.  I have several reasons for this:  You paid for 5 million pixels, why turn them off?  Also, if you take a picture, and you need it smaller for some reason you can use your editing software (like photoshop) to make the picture smaller.  But once you shoot it small, there is no good way to make it big without really killing the quality.  And if you get in the habbit of leaving the camera set on a lower quality/size setting to save space, you may miss that once in a life-time picture.

So, to sum up....  I'd leave the camera at FINE and 2560x1920.  

As for WEB sites, you may want to check out ABOUT.COM and photo.net.  

John