Size queen

[vaneramos]

I received a shock Monday upon uploading images from the first excursion with my Canon: 182 images took up 583 megabytes. That's a honking wallop out of a 17 gigabyte hard drive, as much memory as the Kokak used in two or three months. Then I looked at individual files. They range from 2 to 4.5 megabytes, compared to 300 or 400 kilobytes, a bigger difference than expected.

So I researched the specifications of the Kodak, which I never knew for certain. Then came the biggest surprise: for the past four years I've been working with only 2.3 megapixels. I don't think anything less of that camera. What an amazing tool it was. The resolution was fine for web images.

Now I'm happy to move on.

Clearly I must rethink storing months' worth of images on my hard drive. I spent last night cleaning up, both literally and figuratively. Most of the huge porn collection, too, around 8,000 images, must go. Honestly, I've reached the point in my life where I have better things to do with my time.

I've cleared three gigs, a couple more to go. Now I'm heading to Royal Botanical Gardens' Mediterranean greenhouse to practice macro.

Comments

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

Hmm, you shouldn't have to resize them just to view them, but you need adequate software. Picasa is an excellent free program for basic management and editing of images, better than the usual software provided with digital cameras.

It also allows me to edit images for posting here without actually altering the original files. This is important in case I want to do 8"x10" or larger prints, where high resolution really makes a difference. So at this point I don't want to scale down any images, especially the good ones.

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

That's true. One of the problems is I'm such a packrat that besides the original full-size files, I keep the edited versions of every image I've ever posted on LJ or anywhere else—all on my hard drive. I must become more economical.

[bitterlawngnome.livejournal.com]

You could also look at one of these removable hard drives like I have ... they are a tiny bit slower but not by much.

[grandiva1968.livejournal.com]

Exactly.

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

That's a good idea. Jan, a friend from the chorus, also suggested getting an additional internal hard drive, that 80 Gigs isn't expensive anymore. I need to look at these options right away.

[artricia.livejournal.com]

The new camera takes some really sharp pictures!

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

I'm still in awe. :-)

[grandiva1968.livejournal.com]

I'm making right smart poster-sized prints from my 5MP camera, with images somewhere in the 1-3 GB range per at deepest setting.  More pixels == more fun!

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, I am so needing to start printing these. Now I'm not happy with my printer. ;-)

[grandiva1968.livejournal.com]

I get regular prints from Walgreens.com, and I'm trying out different services for large-format prints.

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

Let me know what you find. I will likely try out a local printer first, but I'd be interested in knowing what quality of services are available online.

[grandiva1968.livejournal.com]

Walgreens.com is great for sizes up to 20 x 30, but that's as far as they go; the bonus is that I can direct prints to whichever Walgreen's store is most convenient for pickup (and the Walgreen's two blocks from my apartment is now a 24 hour store, so I can get regular prints whenever, where the large-formats have to come from Illinois somewhere).  I had my last poster done by a company in New Jersey called Photoenlarge.com.  The work was good and fast, but it took me three days to get hold of them so I could actually get them the file I needed prints of (and it was a sizeable file, so I couldn't e-mail it because their mailbox wouldn't take it, so I really needed to get someone on the phone, because they'd already charged my CC), and while they had quick turnaround once everything was in place, it's just too difficult to work with them.  I haven't gone to Kinko's to see how well they do, but their large size prints are not quite twice what I paid PhotoEnlarge.  I'm sure there are others out there, and I'll look at more when I go through another round of printing and let you know.

[apel.livejournal.com]

Ah! I love the first one. The colours and the impressionistic quality make me think of Nordic late nineteen century painters.

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

Interesting. The palette reminds me of some paintings from the Group of Seven and Tom Thomson, Canadian artists active from about 1915, who were heavily influenced by Impressionism and mostly did landscapes. There are interesting similarities between Nordic and Canadian sensibilities. I'm interested in knowing those Nordic painters.

[songdogmi.livejournal.com]

I, too, am very impressed by how sharp the photos from the new camera are. The old camera certainly didn't seem to be lacking in sharpness, but this one is just amazing. Must be all them pixels.

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

Many times I was confronted by the old camera's inability to convey detail, but I worked with what I had. Now I am blown away.

[jwg.livejournal.com]

You probably have some choice in how much data is stored in the camera. If you aren't going to print your pictures (other than small prints) but just display them on screens you could choose something less storage consumptive. You could experiment taking the same picture several ways to see the difference.

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

Printing is becoming a serious consideration, so I must look at options for storing the full-size images. When I see all the lovely detail in the originals of images like the ones shown here, I can't imagine sacrificing any for the sake of convenience.