Sreejib Loc: Calcutta, INDIA

Hi,
I am a Canon 60D user. If I shoot in low resolution (below 18mp), is it effect on picture quality?

Festina Lente Loc: Florida & Missouri

In a word, yes.
But if you only want 4"x5" prints, you will not see any difference.
If you do not expect to significantly crop or edit your photos, then I see no problem.
If you just want to post them on the Internet then go ahead and select a medium resolution.

But this all begs the question: Why do you want to do this?
Perhaps to save chip space or hard drive storage space?

normsImages Loc: Alabama for now

Memory is cheep, if it be SD cards or hard drive. Retaking that perfect picture so you can print bigger is not, and most always impossible. Even if you don’t see doing more with the shot always shoot the best you can. I can’t count how may times I’ve gone back to old pics and see something new in them.

Sreejib Loc: Calcutta, INDIA

It's all about my hard drive space. Basically I am a raw shooter, so each picture take approx 22-25mb file size. And at the same time also preserve the jpeg format for viewing purpose in computer screen. After conversion of raw file to jpeg it's also become at 10-15mb size. I have already taken approx 10k shoots from 60D. My wife also enthusiastic in photography & she has got my old Canon 550D, So now you can understand my problem. Once again thanks for your reply.

Mpeter45 Loc: Springfield, Illinois

You can get Terabyte of external HD for less than $150. It is a good idea to store your pictures off your computer anyway.

SharpShooter Loc: NorCal

Sreejib, if you shoot at 16MP your file is 4000 X4000 pixels per side if your file were square(but its a rectangle). If we roughly translate a pixel to a dot (on your printer) and you printed a foto that was square using LightRoom at it's default setting of I believe it's 240dpi(adobe thinks 240dpi is more than adequet) you could print a foto up to +/- 17"X17" with no pixel loss at all. We could essentially say a print of 16X20 at a very high rez. So no at that size you would get NO loss in resolution at all and you are doing no interpolation. If you have a reason to shoot lower rez, go ahead and do so, OK by me, but probably not others.

Sreejib Loc: Calcutta, INDIA

You are right, but I have already purchased 500GB external HD few months ago. Now it's the time to purchase another external HD with 1TB capacity.

Sreejib Loc: Calcutta, INDIA

Thanks SharpShooter for you advice. But, is it really help me to shoot 16mp (just 2mp lower than 18mp) to save my HD space.

Festina Lente Loc: Florida & Missouri

OK.
Hard drive space is cheap and getting cheaper every year (Moore's Law). With multi TB drives for under $100 per TB, longterm space should not be an issue.

If you are a RAW shooter, then why are you concerned with JPEG file sizes? Are you shooting both RAW and JPEG just so you can see them on the computer screen? If so, Windows has the capability to view the embedded JPEG inside of every RAW file (See Microsoft's web site for updated viewer).

Otherwise, your RAW files should be used to generate whatever size and quality JPEG you may need or want. What is your workflow and software?

FilmFanatic Loc: Waikato, New Zealand

You need a second external drive for backup too, right? You are backing up right?

Larry-D7000-UK Loc: UK

I would not recommend storing your precious photos on hard drives because I once lost a lot of material due to hard drive going faulty and it was not even a year old.
Dvd disks are more reliable.

Festina Lente Loc: Florida & Missouri

There are only three things in life that are guaranteed:
Death, taxes, and hard drive failure.
Only one of these can be avoided with a back-up or two.

Organic DVDs have already been replaced by inorganic BluRay discs which have a much longer predicted life (100+ years). But technology will replace the BlueRay in 5 to 10 years.

EstherP

AND check the list of supported cameras to make sure yours is listed.
Mine is not. (Olympus E-5).
Another solution to viewing your Camera Raw files would be FastStone Image Viewer, freeware - I use it on my Win7 machine and works great.
EstherP

Photographer Jim Loc: Rio Vista, CA

Yes, lower resolution will effect images quality, but as has been pointed out, this is really only a problem depending on the final presentation of the images. No problems for small prints, or images that will be posted to the Internet at 72 dpi. The problem will rear its head when you make that "perfect capture" and want to blow it up and print at a very large size, and you find yourself wishing you had shot the image in the highest quality resolution your camera would allow.

Memory for image capture and storage has become so reasonablly priced that shooting at lower resolutions to save disk space is no longer the concern that it was back in the early days of digital capture. Heck, I saw a good brand name 3Tb external drive on sale this past weekend for $159! And as was mentioned previously, you NEED to be backing up your images externally anyway, so no reason to not have ample storage to allow you to shoot maximum resolution files. Don't let storage be the limitation that prevents you from producing the "perfect" 30x40 print that is the crown jewel of your photographic endevers.

GDRoth Loc: Southeast Michigan USA

don't bother with 1TB................get 3TBs at least...........

Why have these cameras if you have to under utilize them????