Any reason to not shoot at max size?

[waterjug]

Other than space on your card, is there any reason to not shoot pictures at the maximum possible size on your camera? i.e. do smaller pictures attain higher quality, or anything like that?

Thanks.

Also, you may remember me from the thread about whether or not to buy a 400mm L series canon lens. I ended up going with it, and am very happy with the results. Off my tripod it's great, I can't believe the reach. The picture below is my favorite bird; This was from about 50 feet away, in dim dappled light. Great reach on the lens. Hand-holding it is hard, I usually take a series of photos when I do, and the middle ones are of better quality. I'll hopefully keep getting used to it. It's such a big lens, and my subjects are often flitting around, so a tripod isn't always feasible.

 

[radhak]

No.

Your caveat covers all the cases : the size of the file impacts the card space; also, when sharing, you need to reduce; if not either you end up emailing/uploading a huge size, or the service tends to cut it down to size with dubious results.

But smaller size does not make the picture better in any other way. Not like how the smaller LCD of the camera makes the pic look sharper than on the larger monitor.

That's a might good pic. How do you find the lens in weight/bulk/ general awkwardness? Worth the hassle?

 

[waterjug]

No.

Your caveat covers all the cases : the size of the file impacts the card space; also, when sharing, you need to reduce; if not either you end up emailing/uploading a huge size, or the service tends to cut it down to size with dubious results.

But smaller size does not make the picture better in any other way. Not like how the smaller LCD of the camera makes the pic look sharper than on the larger monitor.

The LCD was actually the reason I was asking haha

 

[randomrogue]

That picture looks soft.

 

[swanysto]

That picture looks soft.

It does look a tad soft. I don't know if that happened when you uploaded it to a host(happens to me quite often), or whether that is the picture. What was your shutter on that picture. I usually get softer pictures when it is not high enough. With that lens it should not be less than 1/400. The higher the better.

 

[dougp]

It's soft because he's hand holding a 400mm lens and shooting a small bird.

Also, you go smaller on picture size if you're shooting continuous burst because you can fit more pictures in the buffer.

 

[waterjug]

No.

Your caveat covers all the cases : the size of the file impacts the card space; also, when sharing, you need to reduce; if not either you end up emailing/uploading a huge size, or the service tends to cut it down to size with dubious results.

But smaller size does not make the picture better in any other way. Not like how the smaller LCD of the camera makes the pic look sharper than on the larger monitor.

That's a might good pic. How do you find the lens in weight/bulk/ general awkwardness? Worth the hassle?

I don't mind the bulk that much honestly; the lens hood retracting is a huge plus. The weight isn't awful, but not great either.

It does look a tad soft. I don't know if that happened when you uploaded it to a host(happens to me quite often), or whether that is the picture. What was your shutter on that picture. I usually get softer pictures when it is not high enough. With that lens it should not be less than 1/400. The higher the better.

It's actually only 1/160th. This was down in a dell that's shaded on all sides by thick foliage. I probably could've stepped down to ISO800 instead of 400, but the bird caught me by surprise, and I didn't have time. It's rare in my area, and I only see them about once per year and NEVER exposed like you see there. I was hand holding too, I'm actually surprised they came out as well as they did, I got a rapid series of about 10 shots.

 

[BlahBlahYouToo]

That picture looks soft.

And really out of focus.

 

[Throckmorton]

I don't think it's out of focus, just soft. My cheap 70-300mm and 100-400mm lenses do the same thing at full zoom. It doesn't look like motion blur either.

 

[SHahsmerdis]

no, i would shoot in RAW as much as possible. Leave all post processing for later. only reason for not shooting at max, is to save space. but with how cheap cards are now a days. who cares?

 

[Throckmorton]

no, i would shoot in RAW as much as possible. Leave all post processing for later. only reason for not shooting at max, is to save space. but with how cheap cards are now a days. who cares?

It does matter if you're doing high speed shooting. I took 20gb of RAW pictures today at the rodeo, spread across 3 cards. JPEG also lets you fit more in the buffer

 

[alkemyst]

speed between shots can be an issue at max res. For the most part if you have memory space shoot big in my book. If you are trying to capture fast action or taking quick shots adjust to what you will be 'going to print' with.

 

[manderson]

I don't think it's out of focus, just soft. My cheap 70-300mm and 100-400mm lenses do the same thing at full zoom. It doesn't look like motion blur either.

Sometimes hard to tell OOF vs very slight motion blur. Not sure what camera the OP is using, but with 400mm L glass it should be tack sharp. I would opt for a bit of motion blur on this one, especially if hand held. Went through the same thing learning to use my 7D. Everyone complaining about the camera being "soft", when in fact the pixel density is much less forgiving and the problem is almost always user technique. Still a very nice photo.

Shooting smaller means more compression with less quality. I like to shoot RAW, but also get really good photos with highest jpeg setting. I haven't tried the SRaw setting yet.

 

[Throckmorton]

There's also blurring from the interpolation of the bayer grid and the antialiasing filter

 

[nvsravank]

The answer depends on whether you are using small area of the sensor like nikons do or if you are using small formats like canons do.
With canon, going to the smaller size improves noise (reduces noise), better color but takes longer to process which means the buffer will fill up faster and so less burst speeds.
You can do all of it using software reduction and so no advantages to going small

On a Nikon, the sensor area read is smaller and so the buffer holds more, processes quicker and so lag is shorter. So for a Nikon there are advantages to doing small. But the picture quality does not improve. It is the same as a post processing crop.

 

[Wall Street]

On some cameras, I believe you can get more shots off in a burst if not in RAW mode as more pics can fit in the memory buffer before writing back to the card.