Where digital photography is concerned, SIZE MATTERS!
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One of the first things to remember when taking pictures with a digital camera is that bigger is definitely better. A large picture can be scaled down with no real problems. Some information (image detail) is lost in the reduction, but the resulting image is to small to show the difference anyway. The problems arise when you have a small image and you try to make it significantly larger. In that situation, the software (Photoshop, or whatever your editor of choice might be) ends up trying to guess what the missing data (image detail) should be.
To illustrate my point, here’s a picture of Mom’s dog, DeeDee. This image is 320 x 240 pixels (Really, too small to print even a wallet sized photo, but it works for my purposes.
Now, let’s say that you’re putting together an online photo album and you want to make a thumbnail of this picture that is 1/4 of it’s original size. You end up with this picture.
The reduction in size has cost some image quality, but the image is now too small to show that loss. To illustrate the problem of enlarging images, let’s take our 80 x 60 thumbnail back up to 320 x 240.
Kinda makes you want to go see your optometrist, doesn’t it?.
Another reason to take larger pictures is because you can sometimes take a small part of a larger picture to get the smaller picture you actually need. The image used in these examples was originally taken at 2272 x 1704 pixels (it could easily print at 8 x 10 inches). Here, scaled down for faster loading, is the original.
Clicking that image will give you the full-sized original in all it’s glory.
I’ll leave you with the reminder to go out and buy the biggest memory card you can find. If you’re serious about photography, you’re going to need it.
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