D-Lux 3: reducing file size, options?

[rjans]

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Most pictures I take are jpeg's. I never have files printed larger than 10x18 cm but most of my pictures are not printed. In order to save a few bites on my MacBook hard drive I was thinking of using the camera set to 8 MP instead of 10 MP or change the quality setting of the jpeg's. I would appreciate any thoughts or recommendations about the two options. Thanks.

Best

[giordano]

Speaking for myself I'd store as many pixels as possible at the highest possible quality (so I usually shoot RAW). I'd rather buy a couple of external USB hard drives and have the original image available in case it's ever needed.

 

That said, an 18 cm/7 inch wide image printed at 240 ppi is only about 2 MP, so if you're really certain you'll never want bigger prints or need to print from a very small part of the image, you'd be safe setting the camera to store about 5 MP - but use the highest JPEG quality.

[rjans]

Thanks John, I also thought of taking lower MP and leaving quality to high but got confused after reading a book where they showed some comparaison examples of setting to lower quality.

I already have an external portable drive wich I use for back-ups. Think I will buy a second one to store images. Just found out that the built in photoloader of my MacBook is set to upload into iPhoto. So if I change that I can transfer to another folder on an external drive.

That way I keep my original images and can afterwards decide wich ones to import into iPhoto.

Best

Roger