Do you shoot at smaller picture sizes, or max resolutions?

[waterjug]

Odd question, I know, but I was looking through pictures here, and the pictures are so detailed....but so small. Even cropping pictures from my T2i, if I shot a full framed bird for instance, I could see maybe 1/8th of it on my 1920x1080 resolution monitor. Those pictures in that thread are much smaller, but retain SO much of the initial detail that you see with much larger pictures. How the hell do they do that? When I crop and then resize my pictures they do NOT retain that level of detail.

 

[twistedlogic]

When I crop and then resize my pictures they do NOT retain that level of detail.

What are you using to crop and resize?

And are you posting these somewhere online or looking straight from your PC's local HDD.

 

[elitejp]

Are you also using the 400mm L?

It has to be due to the lens that you use. My canon 85 1.8 is alot sharper then my sigma 70-300 f4-5.6

 

[corkyg]

When you crop, you are excising a group of pixels. When you resize that, bigger, you are spreading/enlarging the same number of pixels. If you resize smaller, you may be losing more pixels.

Anyway - back to the original question. I always shoot at max res. One can always reduce pixels, but not increase them. I keep my master files in original format.

 

[Throckmorton]

I think almost everybody shoots at max res.

I bet the reason those pictures look so sharp and detailed is that they were exported with a sharpening applied at the final resolution. Lightroom has an option for that. You should never sharpen at the original resolution, even for printing