[teamplayer]

Hi, I recently took a load of photos of my sister's newborn baby, and she wants me to send them to people via e-mail. I am a new owner of a K5, and I haven't got to grips yet with what quality level and resolution I need to be set on if I just want to e-mail shots around and upload to flickr etc.

So I need to resize before putting the shots on to my computer. What image size (as in star system) and resolution should I be looking for, assuming no print requirement?

Also, when resizing images in camera, is there a way to check all images and resize in one go, rather than doing each image separately? I know how to do the latter, but am looking for a way to do the former.

Thanks in advance for your much-needed advice...

[Ash]

Even a 2Mp image is going to be a little too large for web/email viewing.
You can resize groups of images by using the down arrow in play mode for image processing and follow the prompts.
You will need to resize in your favourite image editing software, downsizing the vertical dimension to a maximum of about 800 pixels (even 640 if you are sending to people with smaller screens). This will ensure a smaller sized file and ease of emailing.

[asp1880]

So I need to resize before putting the shots on to my computer. What image size (as in star system) and resolution should I be looking for, assuming no print requirement?

There is no in-camera resizing size that fits perfectly for emailing. The 2mp is too large and the 0.2 (or is it 0.6?) mp is too small. So do it on the computer instead.

I merrily resize family snaps to 800 pixels across and 1-star compression in DCU on the computer for emailing. That yields approx. 100kbyte files.

My dad once printed one of those in A4 size and was happy with it. He didn't notice the outrageous pixelation until I pointed it out to him. Go figure. So tell your recipients to request a print quality file if they want to print themselves.

Sincerely,
--Anders.

[cats_five]

If you are using Windows then there is a Powertoy clone resizer that will work a treat for you:

Image Resizer for Windows

Use the size that will give width less than 1024. You can select multiple files and right-click on the selection to do them all at once, and the resized file is in a new name. You can also sort the directory on date created or size and they will appear before or after all the originals.

[teamplayer]

Thanks both, just what I needed to know.

[teamplayer]

Thanks cats_five, though I'm on a Mac, so have set up a workflow in Automator that does batch resizing at one click. I followed previous advice and set to 800 pixels, and the images now seem to be anywhere between 95 - 125KB.

Saying that, however, trying to attach five of them to an e-mail in yahoo has crashed my mail system twice now. I went for an hour long run after attaching five of those to an e-mail, and it still hadn't made any progress when I got back! Think that might be a computer/yahoo issue, though - solve one problem, and face another.

A related question - I find that on a holiday where I take at least 250 snaps, coming back and uploading those is a serious drain on my computer's memory. For general holiday snaps, with no plans to print or blow up the shots, what quality should I be using? How much does the photo quality suffer as you go down in stars? I can't find any guide which provides me with any context as regards those stars - it's a reverse Spinal Tap (amp up to 11) situation - what is * as compared to *** etc.? Can anyone point me to an explanation of this?

Much appreciated as always...

[GDRoth]

Thanks cats_five, though I'm on a Mac, so have set up a workflow in Automator that does batch resizing at one click. I followed previous advice and set to 800 pixels, and the images now seem to be anywhere between 95 - 125KB.

Saying that, however, trying to attach five of them to an e-mail in yahoo has crashed my mail system twice now. I went for an hour long run after attaching five of those to an e-mail, and it still hadn't made any progress when I got back! Think that might be a computer/yahoo issue, though - solve one problem, and face another.

A related question - I find that on a holiday where I take at least 250 snaps, coming back and uploading those is a serious drain on my computer's memory. For general holiday snaps, with no plans to print or blow up the shots, what quality should I be using? How much does the photo quality suffer as you go down in stars? I can't find any guide which provides me with any context as regards those stars - it's a reverse Spinal Tap (amp up to 11) situation - what is * as compared to *** etc.? Can anyone point me to an explanation of this?

Much appreciated as always...

It sounds like you need to be managing your images with something like Lightroom. LR allows you to maintain your images in their natural size while creating batches for emailing in smaller jpeg sizes....

With a K5, maybe you need to buy extra memory and back up drives for your PC..... :-)

[teamplayer]

You're not wrong there, GDRoth. Once my bank account recovers from the K5, more memory and some hard drives are next on my list!

[tibbitts]

Hi, I recently took a load of photos of my sister's newborn baby, and she wants me to send them to people via e-mail. I am a new owner of a K5, and I haven't got to grips yet with what quality level and resolution I need to be set on if I just want to e-mail shots around and upload to flickr etc.

So I need to resize before putting the shots on to my computer. What image size (as in star system) and resolution should I be looking for, assuming no print requirement?

Also, when resizing images in camera, is there a way to check all images and resize in one go, rather than doing each image separately? I know how to do the latter, but am looking for a way to do the former.

Thanks in advance for your much-needed advice...

You might consider uploading the photos to a website, and emailing links, rather than emailing a large number of pictures.

Paul

[Colbyt]

Hi, I recently took a load of photos of my sister's newborn baby, and she wants me to send them to people via e-mail. I am a new owner of a K5, and I haven't got to grips yet with what quality level and resolution I need to be set on if I just want to e-mail shots around and upload to flickr etc.

So I need to resize before putting the shots on to my computer. What image size (as in star system) and resolution should I be looking for, assuming no print requirement?

Also, when resizing images in camera, is there a way to check all images and resize in one go, rather than doing each image separately? I know how to do the latter, but am looking for a way to do the former.

Thanks in advance for your much-needed advice...

I agree with the resizing mentioned above, but another option is to upload them to something like snapfish. That way people can order prints if they like. I suspect you are going need to keep them under 2mb even for uploading. Your crops and edits will be more what you want than an automated service doing it.

[asp1880]

A related question - I find that on a holiday where I take at least 250 snaps, coming back and uploading those is a serious drain on my computer's memory. For general holiday snaps, with no plans to print or blow up the shots, what quality should I be using? How much does the photo quality suffer as you go down in stars? I can't find any guide which provides me with any context as regards those stars - it's a reverse Spinal Tap (amp up to 11) situation - what is * as compared to *** etc.? Can anyone point me to an explanation of this?

There are two schools here. One school will never shoot at anything except full resolution, in case they might accidentally take the shot of a lifetime to print big and hang on the wall. I view it as a kind of angst. As you can tell, I belong to the other school. My school realizes that we will seldom print, and then only in A4 or A3 size, for those prints you can make do with the 6mp setting and still have room to crop a bit.

As for the compression level (the stars). Try this: take a RAW shot of a scene with lots of highfrequency detail, like wires, trees or such. Then use the in-camera development to develop 1, 2, and 3 star jpegs of that same raw shot. Finally compare the jpegs to each other using the in-camera comparison tool. You can zoom and pan two versions in sync and pixel peep all you want. The compression artifacts are clearly visible around hard edges.

My personal conclusions from this exercise is: 2* is almost as good as 3*, 1* is a great deal worse than 2*. But try it yourself.

So my normal shooting is 6mp 3*, unless I expect heavy cropping (eg. my lens is too short), then I go to 10mp 2*, which yields same file sizes as 6mp 3*. I'm a casual family shooter, not an artist. So I'm pretty pragmatic about this topic.

Here's one final argument for reduced resolution: To properly benefit from the full sensor resolution, the rest of the image capture system must be of the same standard. That means tripod, perfect focus, optimum aperture, sufficient shutter speed, top glass, no subject motion blur etc. Anytime you skip some of these points, you have already lost half the resolution and might as well just record in reduced pixel density, like 6mp.

You might also delete the failed and subpar shots early and save space that way.

Regards,
--Anders.

[Schraubstock]

Hi

I am a bit perplexed as to why you purchased the K-5 If all you want to do is shoot low quality JPGs, never envisage printing anything bigger than postcard and/or e-mail your creative work at 72 DPI . You don't need a high resolution, technically advanced camera for this. There are dozens of very capable lower end cams on the market that will do this just fine and would probably suit your style of photography much better anyway.

Greetings

[icejam]

Get a free Picassa account. Uplad photos online and send emails with link to those interested. Not only you're saving on time but also on bandwidth (sending each picture only onece). And if you are not on unlimited internet this might also be important to you. This way you could send larger pictures, using less data traffic.

[teamplayer]

That's really useful, asp1880. I actually had started doing comparison shots a few weeks ago, and am slowly working my way round the camera. I had got stuck on the star system, and a layman's explanation like that is really helpful.

[asp1880]

I am a bit perplexed as to why you purchased the K-5 If all you want to do is shoot low quality JPGs, never envisage printing anything bigger than postcard and/or e-mail your creative work at 72 DPI . You don't need a high resolution, technically advanced camera for this. There are dozens of very capable lower end cams on the market that will do this just fine and would probably suit your style of photography much better anyway.

I guess you're right, I don't NEED a K-5. But I want one, that's different.
I also have a K-x and I can get the same shots from that one, I just have to work a little harder and be more anticipating when shooting, because operation is slower (more menu diving, fewer buttons - K-5 hyper P is awesome!). I also have a p&s and I can get good shots from that one too, but that's really hard work and a lot of frustration.

I enjoy the facial expressions, composition, mood and colour of my images, not the resolution. I also enjoy the shooting experience, and the K-5 soundly trumps everything else there. As I said, I'm not an artist. Maybe you are.

Sincerely,
--Anders.