Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: How many MB required for higher resolution digital pics?

This is topic How many MB required for higher resolution digital pics? in forum Film-Yak at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

To visit this topic, use this URL:
https://ft-forum.com/ft/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=8;t=004274

Posted by Michael Schaffer (Member # 1204) on 09-27-2005, 02:07 AM:

The pics I take with my 3.2 Mpixel camera take up anywhere between 1.1 and 2.2 MB of storage space at the "highest quality/lowest compression" setting, but the majority of them come in at around 1.5-1.7 MB.
What are typical file sizes for images in the 5-8 Mpixel class, again at highest quality settings?

Posted by Jennifer Pan (Member # 2035) on 09-27-2005, 02:37 AM:

My SLR 6.2 Megapixels probably ranges about 2.6 MB set at the highest quality JPEG. As for the RAW pictures I take on it... its about 5.4 MB.

On the lowest setting for mine (Basic JPEG, 1504 x 1000) it comes down to 240 KB. And it still looks pretty dang nice.

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 09-27-2005, 02:50 AM:

My Nikon D100 will take photos at about 14.5MB each shot. Using Photoshop though, reducing to a reasonable size (say 1600 pixels) and saving on compression of 8 will yield a very nice image at 200-300 KB. If you go smaller (say 800 pixels) they come out to 100-150 KB. As an example, this shot of mine is 800 pixels tall by 532 pixels wide and is only 105 KB in size, but it was 14.5MB in the camera.

The trick is to always photograph at the highest quality setting your camera can handle, then shrink and compress as desired in Photoshop.

Posted by Jennifer Pan (Member # 2035) on 09-27-2005, 03:06 AM:

Oh snap Brad, I almost bought the same camera. But I decided to go for the D50 since it pretty much had the same Megapixels.

*The dude is like drippin' wet* I'm not sure if I want to know why you took/have that picture. [Razz]

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 09-27-2005, 04:02 AM:

I use a Nikon F75 (film) camera & Nikon LS50 scanner. Even though the scanner will do a much higher resolution, I've settled on 1800dpi, uncompressed TIF files for the master version of each pic I store on CD, which comes in at 10-12mb per photo. Anything bigger takes up an insane amount of space and is unnecessary unless you want to blow the photo up to A4 or bigger. After all, the beauty of taking pictures on film is that you can always scan the original element again, whenever you like. If I want to email a photo or do anything else with it that calls for a much smaller file size, I'll down-res it from the archived TIF and/or convert it to JPEG.

Agreed with Brad that for a digital camera, the best way to go is to originate the image with as high a resolution as the camera can deliver and then down-res if needed. I'd also suggest taking each pictures in a format that does not use lossy compression if your camera has this facility, archiving the original uncompressed and making copies in a compressed format as and when needed.

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 09-27-2005, 04:18 AM:

Jen, I've been hired to do some modeling pictures lately. That day actually started pouring down rain out of nowhere and I really liked the lighting that the clouds produced so we shot some more even though we were both drenched.

Posted by Tommie Evans (Member # 2674) on 09-27-2005, 01:24 PM:

Pixel Charts

Useful charts covering pixel resolution/depth etc...