SHQ vs. HQ

I am a newbie--does the picture quality make a big difference if you set the setting to SHQ vs HQ? I have a UZI C2100. Also, if you take a picture from close range (about 2 feet away) and it turns out blurry, is it because I should have set the camera to marco? Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks!

Hi. I just recently bought the c2100 too so I don't know too much about the compression. I would guess that there isn't too much of a difference between HQ and SHQ unless you want to print out 8x10. Even then, I don't know if it would matter too much.

As for your focusing question... Yes.. if you are within 2 feet you have to set it to macro. If you have it on full zoom, then even macro mode probably won't even help. There is a minimum distance, and I'm sure on full zoom you'll have to be farther than 2 feet away. You can easily check if the camera is getting a focus by looking at the green dot that appears on the top left of the lcd when you pre-focus (by holding the shutter button halfway down). If it blinks, then the camera did not focus correctly. Hope that helps.

Joyce Oldenburg said:

I am a newbie--does the picture quality make a big difference if
you set the setting to SHQ vs HQ? I have a UZI C2100. Also, if
you take a picture from close range (about 2 feet away) and it
turns out blurry, is it because I should have set the camera to
marco? Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks!

Click to expand...

I think this comes down to personal preference for each person. These are digital cameras, take as many pictures as it takes and experiment to get a feel of what you can tolerate. Take a picture of anything and everything, they can always be deleted at no cost.

But here's what I find works for me. I now have three 64Mb SM cards so space isn't usually a problem so I usually now use SHQ exclusively, because why no get the most from your shots without using TIFF. But the times when I do choose between the two here's what I keep in mind.

1) what is the main focus of the picture: something with a lot of fine detail or something with little detail like a person standing in front of a plain backround. HQ would do fine for the person and a plain backround. Last Fall I took some pictures of the Fall folliage in HQ - big mistake ( didn't know much about compression then as I do now). Here your main focus is something with a lot of detail. If you look close enough you can see how the higher compression of HQ effects the detai and almost gives a smugging effect across the leaves in spots.

2) If you know that you are going to want to print the picture out on a 8.5X11 paper before hand, then I would lean toward using SHQ for any picture. But you may want to apply point 1 if memory space is a problem.

What one person may think is fine, might not be for someone else - EXPERIMENT.

Joyce Oldenburg said:

I am a newbie--does the picture quality make a big difference if
you set the setting to SHQ vs HQ? I have a UZI C2100. Also, if
you take a picture from close range (about 2 feet away) and it
turns out blurry, is it because I should have set the camera to
marco? Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks!

Click to expand...

Joyce Oldenburg said:

I am a newbie--does the picture quality make a big difference if
you set the setting to SHQ vs HQ? I have a UZI C2100. Also, if
you take a picture from close range (about 2 feet away) and it
turns out blurry, is it because I should have set the camera to
marco? Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks!

Click to expand...

Joyce;

I do a lot of pictures of people and sports. I tend to have very little interest in the background, I want the player(s) and the ball (I shoot pictuers of soccer). I use my UZI in HQ mode most of the time. As NCL has indicated however, It would be foolish to try and shoot the fall foliage in HQ and print it at 8X10. For that type and depth of detail you would want SHQ. Many people would even say use TIFF for that, but I consider the loss of flexibility (both in quantity of pictures, and shot to shot time) to be too high, so I never use TIFF. I too have 3 64MB cards and the original 8MB card with my UZI. I recently took a load of pictures of my nieces and nephews when they visited us on vacation, I used HQ and everyone was delighted with the 4X6 and wallet prints that they took home with them!
MDiamond

To take normal everyday pictures I usually set mine to SQ at 1280X960 high mode. They come out great. I have even printed out up to 5X7 prints with no problems.

Kim

Joyce Oldenburg said:

I am a newbie--does the picture quality make a big difference if
you set the setting to SHQ vs HQ? I have a UZI C2100. Also, if
you take a picture from close range (about 2 feet away) and it
turns out blurry, is it because I should have set the camera to
marco? Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks!

Click to expand...

Joyce Oldenburg said:

I am a newbie--does the picture quality make a big difference if
you set the setting to SHQ vs HQ? I have a UZI C2100. Also, if
you take a picture from close range (about 2 feet away) and it
turns out blurry, is it because I should have set the camera to
marco? Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks!

Click to expand...

Hello Joyce, With reference to the 2' picture: macro setting is necessary with the c2100 for pix from 4" to 23" and at the closer range, MUST be in wide angle and not telephoto. If you try to tele when in the macro setting, you will get blurry pictures.

John R.

John R. said:

Hello Joyce, With reference to the 2' picture: macro setting is
necessary with the c2100 for pix from 4" to 23" and at the closer
range, MUST be in wide angle and not telephoto. If you try to tele
when in the macro setting, you will get blurry pictures.

John R.

Click to expand...

It works and works well.

Try it.

John

What's the outer limit of the macro range, two feet? I read in another post somewhere that macro should be used for shots up to a meter away, is that too far?

Mike Diamond said:

Joyce Oldenburg said:

I am a newbie--does the picture quality make a big difference if
you set the setting to SHQ vs HQ? I have a UZI C2100. Also, if
you take a picture from close range (about 2 feet away) and it
turns out blurry, is it because I should have set the camera to
marco? Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks!

Click to expand...

Joyce;
I do a lot of pictures of people and sports. I tend to have very
little interest in the background, I want the player(s) and the
ball (I shoot pictuers of soccer). I use my UZI in HQ mode most of
the time. As NCL has indicated however, It would be foolish to try
and shoot the fall foliage in HQ and print it at 8X10. For that
type and depth of detail you would want SHQ. Many people would
even say use TIFF for that, but I consider the loss of flexibility
(both in quantity of pictures, and shot to shot time) to be too
high, so I never use TIFF. I too have 3 64MB cards and the
original 8MB card with my UZI. I recently took a load of pictures
of my nieces and nephews when they visited us on vacation, I used
HQ and everyone was delighted with the 4X6 and wallet prints that
they took home with them!
MDiamond

Click to expand...

Does the higher compression really result in loss of data. I thought one doesn't lose the quality unless I open the HQ image and save it again

According to the manual, the range in macro is:

wide angle is from 3.9" to 23.6"
telephoto is from 3.25ft to 6.6ft

Obviously the distance is somewhere inbetween those numbers if your zoomed half way.

John

Shawn Read said:

What's the outer limit of the macro range, two feet? I read in
another post somewhere that macro should be used for shots up to a
meter away, is that too far?

Click to expand...

Sure does - the camera makes the first save with what ever level of comression the camera is set at SQ, HQ or SHQ. TIFF of course no compression. Any additional saves with photo editor will add to more data loss, mostly when changes have been made to the image. It is good practice to save the image with photo editor in a non lossy file format (bmp, tiff, etc) before you are going to make any enhancements or changes to your picture. Then you can save all you want while you are working on your image and then perhaps when you are satisfied you are totally done save it back to jpg. This way only two jpg saves were done instead of 5 or more. Two or three saves probably won't be a big deal, but I wouldn't go more than that.

surya said:

Mike Diamond said:

Joyce Oldenburg said:

I am a newbie--does the picture quality make a big difference if
you set the setting to SHQ vs HQ? I have a UZI C2100. Also, if
you take a picture from close range (about 2 feet away) and it
turns out blurry, is it because I should have set the camera to
marco? Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks!

Click to expand...

Joyce;
I do a lot of pictures of people and sports. I tend to have very
little interest in the background, I want the player(s) and the
ball (I shoot pictuers of soccer). I use my UZI in HQ mode most of
the time. As NCL has indicated however, It would be foolish to try
and shoot the fall foliage in HQ and print it at 8X10. For that
type and depth of detail you would want SHQ. Many people would
even say use TIFF for that, but I consider the loss of flexibility
(both in quantity of pictures, and shot to shot time) to be too
high, so I never use TIFF. I too have 3 64MB cards and the
original 8MB card with my UZI. I recently took a load of pictures
of my nieces and nephews when they visited us on vacation, I used
HQ and everyone was delighted with the 4X6 and wallet prints that
they took home with them!
MDiamond

Click to expand...

Does the higher compression really result in loss of data. I
thought one doesn't lose the quality unless I open the HQ image and
save it again

Click to expand...

surya said:

Does the higher compression really result in loss of data. I
thought one doesn't lose the quality unless I open the HQ image and
save it again

Click to expand...

The initial compression is performed in the camera. Thus the difference in modes. The additional loss of image quality happens each time you decompress and recompress the image on your computer. You do this by opening a JPG, and saving it again. A method by which you can avoid the additional detail loss is to save the image from the camera on your computer in an uncompressed format. The Photoshop software saves pictures without compressing them, savein an image as a TIFF file will avoid recompressing them, etc. Of course, you can't gain what wasn't there in the beginning.
MDiamond

Mike,

When you plug your camera into your computer, you recognize it as a removable external drive. If you drag and drop from the camera to your hard drive, you loose no information that you havenl;t lost already in the initial save in the camera.

Mike Diamond said:

surya said:

Does the higher compression really result in loss of data. I
thought one doesn't lose the quality unless I open the HQ image and
save it again

Click to expand...

The initial compression is performed in the camera. Thus the
difference in modes. The additional loss of image quality happens
each time you decompress and recompress the image on your computer.
You do this by opening a JPG, and saving it again. A method by
which you can avoid the additional detail loss is to save the image
from the camera on your computer in an uncompressed format. The
Photoshop software saves pictures without compressing them, savein
an image as a TIFF file will avoid recompressing them, etc. Of
course, you can't gain what wasn't there in the beginning.
MDiamond

Click to expand...