Just wondering if I should have my camera set to Superfine, or if Fine is sufficient. Is there a huge difference between the two?

Thanks.

It depends on the camera. If you have a more high end camera, "Fine" may be adequate, but if it is a cheaper/older model, "Superfine" may be necessary just to get half-decent quality. Generally, it is better to use the highest settings possible, unless there is a good reason not to.

Agree with Sam, try to use the highest quality you can. The better the quality of the image, the larger prints possible. Also essential if you want to compose your shots later by cropping. Allows you to crop larger amounts from the image and still retain a decent amount of resolution.

Thank you both for your response. I have the Canon PowerShot A75, would you still recommend Superfine?

Thanks again.

Christina, it depends how you will output your images. If you plan to print 4x6 then you don't need superfine. If you have an image that catches your eye and you want to have a larger print such as a 8x10 or larger, I would recommend superfine. Personally, I always shoot the highest qua;ity I can. It gives me the greatest options in the end. That's a good camera!

Thanks Darryl. I just got it for Christmas and I LOVE it! I'm still learning how to use everything but it's a fun learning process. :o)

When I got my first digicam, I used to take every photo at 1024x768, so that I could fit more pics on the CF card. When I started posting on caedes, I realised that it would be better if I used 1600x1200 (which was the cameras maximum). Of course, it was too late to go back and change the ones I had already taken, several of which you can see in my gallery, at the larger res, but if I had realised I would have used the max. settings at the beginning. Nowadays I have a Nikon D70, which has a MUCH higher res, but I still use the maximum possible. It fills up the card more quickly, but I prefer to go through and delete the shots I don't want and have the ones I do want at maximum size and quality. So, in short, I am suggesting that you use the highest settings you can; even if you don't necessarily think you need it now, you might be glad you did it a few years down the track.

I agree with Sam. You can’t have too much resolution. Use the highest available, one-day you will be pleased you did, guarantee it.

Thanks for your input guys, I think I'm going to follow your advice and set it to the highest setting, I have a lot of memory so space isn't an issue.

:o)

If you intend to make larger size prints (8x10 max prolly for your 3.2 megapixel camera) I would recommend using at superfine. 3.2 MP is not all that large. The only time you would want to go less than that is if A: you know for sure that you wont be heavily cropping or enlarging on print B. You are absolutely strapped for space in your camera and you must get these last gorgeous shots in C. You need to rapidly take some photos of a scene full of action

Thanks.

My personal opinion is that "fine" is good enough 90% of the time. It's a tradeoff between file size and quality, and oftentimes I'd rather have the extra room on my card than the slight improvement in quality. Though if I had the option to shoot in RAW format I'd probably leapfrog over superfine to that... :-p

The price of flash cards has come down dramatically, so that shouldn't limit your photo shoots. I use a one gig that I bought on eBay for under $80. I also bought an extra battery pack (two batteries @ 1500mAh) for around $90 that fits securely beneath my Minolta A2, and that also allows me enormous numbers of images (approx 130) at higher resolutions.

thanks guys, and yes the price of flash cards has dropped a lot, it's great!

Whoa. Look directly above what I am typing. Unless I am mistaken, doesn't compression refer to the method of storage? For example, if my camera uses jpeg, wouldn't the compression rating of fine or superfine signify the depth of the color groupings? If I am wrong, ignore me, but I am not sure the corrct question has been responded to, even if the answer remains the same.

jpgs are all 8bits period. just like the slider for quality vs file size in photoshop when saving a jpg, that is what a superfine/fine setting is on the camera. lower file sizes mean more compression artifacts, and less detail, but you can get more pictures then

Have you ever taken a shot with the level as low as possible? The file size is tiny without question, but there are extremely few colors used, and large batches of each. It looks just terrible. When you save jpegs in GIMP, it asks you what quality you want to save an image at. The default is 85, yet I always use 100. I tried 0 to make sure that I wasn't at the wrong end of the spectrum and it looked awful do to what I described above.

well there's still 8 bits of colour in the picture, it just tries to make many (especially with low compression) it can be around 4-8-16 pixels into one 'gradient' that will generally work, therefore you'll lose quality, and it will look like you lose colour because you lose colour details

That was over my head, but does my point still stand? :-D