Why use super fine resolution?

Pardon the dumb "Newbie" question: Why would I use 'Large Super Fine' resolution on the a510? I intend to print only 4x6 and a rare 5x7 for a photo album. 98% will be for pc viewing from burned cd's or tranferred via jump drives. Is there a significant difference between the Super Fine and the Fine? There is also an option of 3:2 aspect ratio for 4x6 printing that has me confused as to what to choose. I am asking because of the difference in # of shots per card. If I could gain more shots without a noticable difference or is there another reason to stay on the super fine setting. Finally, will I see much differnce in the movie mode if I chose a lesser setting. I am considering the a510 because of the fine reviews and it looks like a great starter cam.
Thanks for any assistance or links.

Rick1Usa said:

Pardon the dumb "Newbie" question: Why would I use 'Large Super
Fine' resolution on the a510? I intend to print only 4x6 and a rare
5x7 for a photo album. 98% will be for pc viewing from burned cd's
or tranferred via jump drives. Is there a significant difference
between the Super Fine and the Fine? There is also an option of 3:2
aspect ratio for 4x6 printing that has me confused as to what to
choose. I am asking because of the difference in # of shots per
card. If I could gain more shots without a noticable difference or
is there another reason to stay on the super fine setting. Finally,
will I see much differnce in the movie mode if I chose a lesser
setting. I am considering the a510 because of the fine reviews and
it looks like a great starter cam.
Thanks for any assistance or links.

Click to expand...

In my experience as a photo lab technician, I can see a difference in prints between the two settings mentioned...(even at 4 x 6). It's apparent on a computer screen. I might be looking with a more critical eye. As for the option of good quality 5 x 7 prints, keep the setting at it's highest.

You might just wait a bit till prices eventually drop on a higher capapcity memory card, then shoot everything at highest setting so you'll have the most printing options available. You can never put resolution in an image file if it wasn't there to begin with. (Preposition notwithstanding).

I'm not familiar with the A510, but I've found you'll be happiest with shooting movies in the highest resolution and fastest framerate possible (at least as long as the camera allows some non-trivial time, my first digital cam, S110, only allowed 640x480 for 4 secs). My requirement for my recent purchase, the SD500, was 640x480 at 30 fps for at least 3 min. The camera exceeds this allowing you to fill the card. While a lot of lower resolution settings are available, I most likely always use the highest setting even though it creates huge files. This could be a problem for some depending on what they do with them, but it is fine for my purposes and the quality and ease of viewing are worth it in my opinion.

i always use max possible quality so that i can "tweak" photos with much more comfort using Photoshop or other photo editors ( e.g. crop a specific part of a whole photo ).

Rick1Usa said:

Pardon the dumb "Newbie" question: Why would I use 'Large Super
Fine' resolution on the a510? I intend to print only 4x6 and a rare
5x7 for a photo album. 98% will be for pc viewing from burned cd's
or tranferred via jump drives. Is there a significant difference
between the Super Fine and the Fine? There is also an option of 3:2
aspect ratio for 4x6 printing that has me confused as to what to
choose. I am asking because of the difference in # of shots per
card. If I could gain more shots without a noticable difference or
is there another reason to stay on the super fine setting. Finally,
will I see much differnce in the movie mode if I chose a lesser
setting. I am considering the a510 because of the fine reviews and
it looks like a great starter cam.
Thanks for any assistance or links.

Click to expand...

Rick1Usa said:

Pardon the dumb "Newbie" question: Why would I use 'Large Super
Fine' resolution on the a510? --

Click to expand...

Good question. You are assured that your images will have the least
amount of compression and artifacts. Memory is really cheap these
days, so it doesn't hurt to go for the gold. HOWEVER, based on my
own tests(and many others on these forums), there is VERY little
difference between Large/Superfine and Large/Fine. I did a series of
test shots at both settings and printed them out on my i950. I have
to honestly say that I had to really look hard to find any differences
in quality. In most cases, there was no visible loss in quality with the
Large/Fine files.

Robert

'Don't sneak up on it - surround it'

There are a couple of reasons to use the highest resolution / lowest compression settings.

1. Cropablility. At high resolution you can "compose" the picture after the fact with creative cropping. After cropping you will still have plenty of pixels.

2. The other is a little like playing the lottery - not too likely but you can't win if you don't play. Some day you are going to (by craft or luck) take the most awesome picture anyone has ever taken. When that happens, won't it be disgusting if all you can ever do with it is print at 5x7?

The fact that you are on this forum indicates that you are interested in "Photography", rather than "Snapshot Taking". For snapshots, about 2 mp is plenty. But for Photography, why limit yourself before you even take the shot? Just my opinion.

Rick,

Sooner or later you will want to make a quality print, at that point you will be really unhappy to realize you only have 1.5 megapix images on your hard drive.

One of my friends got a clean new digicam, (both shal remain unmaned, particularly snce the camera probably is smarter than my friend.) having searched the pick were a nice camera with great resolution... So far so good. Off she goes to Europe. when she comes home she tells me that she realized that there were a setting which allowed her to put shoot more pictures on the same card.... To make a long story short.... 8x10 pictures of Venice looks REALLY bad from 640x480 files.!

ALWAYS shoot the largest possible file, that way you have the option to do exciting things in the future - even if you don't use that option right now.

Just me 2 cents.

Bo

http://www.bophoto.com/panos

Rick1Usa said:

Pardon the dumb "Newbie" question: Why would I use 'Large Super
Fine' resolution on the a510? I intend to print only 4x6 and a rare
5x7 for a photo album. 98% will be for pc viewing from burned cd's
or tranferred via jump drives. Is there a significant difference
between the Super Fine and the Fine? There is also an option of 3:2
aspect ratio for 4x6 printing that has me confused as to what to
choose. I am asking because of the difference in # of shots per
card. If I could gain more shots without a noticable difference or
is there another reason to stay on the super fine setting. Finally,
will I see much differnce in the movie mode if I chose a lesser
setting. I am considering the a510 because of the fine reviews and
it looks like a great starter cam.
Thanks for any assistance or links.

Click to expand...

--
Bo

http://www.bophoto.com

For the best quality picture and to get great pictures use the laragest resolution and the largest compreesion.

You can delete the bad pictures and keep the good ones. From there, you can crop, post process, etc...
Later you can make a copy from the original in a smaller saved file size.

Memory cards are cheap if you find the right price, why compromise a great picture for later use.

IMHO,
sue anne
gee-six
---------------------------

Rick1Usa said:

Pardon the dumb "Newbie" question: Why would I use 'Large Super
Fine' resolution on the a510? I intend to print only 4x6 and a rare
5x7 for a photo album. 98% will be for pc viewing from burned cd's
or tranferred via jump drives. Is there a significant difference
between the Super Fine and the Fine? There is also an option of 3:2
aspect ratio for 4x6 printing that has me confused as to what to
choose. I am asking because of the difference in # of shots per
card. If I could gain more shots without a noticable difference or
is there another reason to stay on the super fine setting. Finally,
will I see much differnce in the movie mode if I chose a lesser
setting. I am considering the a510 because of the fine reviews and
it looks like a great starter cam.
Thanks for any assistance or links.

Click to expand...

Wouldn't it be a shame to get a wondreful awe-inspiring shot, only to realize you can't print it larger than 5x7 because you compressed it too much or picked too small a resolution?

You can always throw information away later. Once it's throw away you can never get it back.

Memory cards are inexpensive. Storage is even less expensive.

Shoot at the highest resolution with the least amount of compression. It may not make a difference for 4x6's but it will make a difference for anything larger.

Just my 2 cents. Best of luck.

Rick1Usa said:

Pardon the dumb "Newbie" question: Why would I use 'Large Super
Fine' resolution on the a510? I intend to print only 4x6 and a rare
5x7 for a photo album. 98% will be for pc viewing from burned cd's
or tranferred via jump drives. Is there a significant difference
between the Super Fine and the Fine? There is also an option of 3:2
aspect ratio for 4x6 printing that has me confused as to what to
choose. I am asking because of the difference in # of shots per
card. If I could gain more shots without a noticable difference or
is there another reason to stay on the super fine setting. Finally,
will I see much differnce in the movie mode if I chose a lesser
setting. I am considering the a510 because of the fine reviews and
it looks like a great starter cam.
Thanks for any assistance or links.

Click to expand...

Ooops, I should have read the posts first. MSpivey said almost the exact same thing. Sorry for being redundant.

Rob Bernhard said:

You can always throw information away later. Once it's throw away
you can never get it back.

Memory cards are inexpensive. Storage is even less expensive.

Shoot at the highest resolution with the least amount of
compression. It may not make a difference for 4x6's but it will
make a difference for anything larger.

Just my 2 cents. Best of luck.

Rick1Usa said:

Pardon the dumb "Newbie" question: Why would I use 'Large Super
Fine' resolution on the a510? I intend to print only 4x6 and a rare
5x7 for a photo album. 98% will be for pc viewing from burned cd's
or tranferred via jump drives. Is there a significant difference
between the Super Fine and the Fine? There is also an option of 3:2
aspect ratio for 4x6 printing that has me confused as to what to
choose. I am asking because of the difference in # of shots per
card. If I could gain more shots without a noticable difference or
is there another reason to stay on the super fine setting. Finally,
will I see much differnce in the movie mode if I chose a lesser
setting. I am considering the a510 because of the fine reviews and
it looks like a great starter cam.
Thanks for any assistance or links.

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

I shoot large superfine most of the time. But I am really hard pressed to tell between fine and superfine at 100% magnification. Chances are you wont see the difference between the two on print. Try to avoid normal compression though, its artifacts are quite obvious.

If you got lots of memory space go for large superfine. If not dont be afraid to use large fine.

Rick1Usa said:

Pardon the dumb "Newbie" question: Why would I use 'Large Super
Fine' resolution on the a510? I intend to print only 4x6 and a rare
5x7 for a photo album. 98% will be for pc viewing from burned cd's
or tranferred via jump drives. Is there a significant difference
between the Super Fine and the Fine? There is also an option of 3:2
aspect ratio for 4x6 printing that has me confused as to what to
choose. I am asking because of the difference in # of shots per
card. If I could gain more shots without a noticable difference or
is there another reason to stay on the super fine setting. Finally,
will I see much differnce in the movie mode if I chose a lesser
setting. I am considering the a510 because of the fine reviews and
it looks like a great starter cam.
Thanks for any assistance or links.

Click to expand...

Rick1Usa said:

Pardon the dumb "Newbie" question: Why would I use 'Large Super
Fine' resolution on the a510? I intend to print only 4x6 and a rare
5x7 for a photo album. 98% will be for pc viewing from burned cd's
or tranferred via jump drives. Is there a significant difference
between the Super Fine and the Fine? There is also an option of 3:2
aspect ratio for 4x6 printing that has me confused as to what to
choose. I am asking because of the difference in # of shots per
card. If I could gain more shots without a noticable difference or
is there another reason to stay on the super fine setting. Finally,
will I see much differnce in the movie mode if I chose a lesser
setting. I am considering the a510 because of the fine reviews and
it looks like a great starter cam.
Thanks for any assistance or links.

Click to expand...

With a sincere thank you to all who responded. I definitely now have an experienced and informative grasp of when to use these two different settings. I feel more than convinced to use the highest setting unless the situation would define differently.
Again, thank you all so very much.