11-12-2006, 08:00 PM
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Executive Editor
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 29,160
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KenRockwell.com: Nikon D200 Image Quality Settings
"What's the best image quality (QUAL) setting? JPG or raw, or raw + JPG? If JPG, should you use FINE, NORMAL or BASIC? Should you use Size Priority or Optimal Quality JPG Compression? How about Large, Medium or Small image dimensions? If raw, should you use compressed or uncompressed? In a fantasy world you'd use uncompressed NEF or FINE JPG, but after you shoot for a while you'll get logjammed with all the data you have to store, forward, process and archive. Ideally we want a setting that gives us spectacular quality with as small a file size as possible. This also lets you get the greatest number of shots on a card and download them the fastest."
I enjoy Ken Rockwell's writing because he often challenges the norms that we all assume to be true. If you have a big storage card, it's best to shoot your photos in the highest resolution, with the least compression, right? Well, maybe not. Ken shoots some photos and does comparisons here that may surprise you - I did some tests of my own a few months back, comparing JPEG Fine to JPEG Normal, and was unable to discern a difference with any image I shot, even at 200% zoom. So since then, when I shoot JPEG, I leave it at JPEG Normal. This article is a must-read for any digital photographer, even if you own a different digital camera. I tend to slightly tweak most images, even JPEGs, after shooting, so I don't know that I'd ever want to go down to JPEG Basic, but even after one re-save of a JPEG Normal file I have yet to see any artifacts. Sometimes you can make your life easier by second-guessing your assumptions!
I take issue with one of Ken's recommendations though: dropping the resolution of the image. Near-invisible compression artifacts are one thing, but a smaller image at a lower resolution is quite another. Twenty years from now we may be staring at 12,000 by 10,000 pixel resolution monitors, so having images with the largest "physical" pixel dimensions is important. I look back now at images I took with my first digital camera, a Kodak DC265, and the 1152 x 768 resolution images don't even fill the screen of any of my monitors.
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