Photos....

[+YeOleImposter]

Was wondering what everyone does with their photos. Not when you upload them, but for your personal archives. Do you keep them at the 'high' quality setting (4 mpix 2400x1500 pixels) or reduce them down?

 

I really don't see the need of keeping these huge 1meg files when 100k will do just fine...

[+Black Dog Trackers]

I ususally shoot with settings of 1024x768 or 1600x1200. If I had my wits about me at all times, I'd probably always switch from 1024x768 for an area picture to 640x480 for the disk close-ups. I don't think that benchmark documentation needs really big pictures.

 

I keep what I shoot. As far as space for keeping pictures is concerned, with the vast hard disks we have these days and a CD writer, it just doesn't matter.

 

I upload what I shoot. If the GC.com site reduces the size of my pictures, that's fine with me.

[+Kewaneh & Shark]

I tend to take my pics at a higher resolution just so I can get as much detail as possible. I don't have a real high-res camera so image size is not a real issue, but I'll take what I can get. I usually crop the images if necessary before I post them but keep the originals. Like BDT, I burn them onto a CD and keep them off my hard drive.

- Kewaneh

[+YeOleImposter]

One reason I ask is that I linked a photo to my notes in GSAK. It treats it just like inline photos on a web page - but the photos are too big to be of any use. So just like on a web page design, I need to reduce the size to make them usable. Now, if I reduce it, is there any reason to keep the 1meg photo anymore?

 

I guess the other thing I could do is link to the photo I upload on GC.com and then I don't have to keep 2 copies of the photo at all.

[+FSU*Noles]

I always keep the original closeup shot of the marker on my hard drive, ~3mb apiece, and delete the resized image that I upload to the site.

 

I don't, however, keep the original "location" shots that show the views of the marker, witness posts, and the surrounding landscape - for those, I actually keep the resized images (~30kb) and delete the originals.

 

Just a matter of personal preference and how much space you have to store images I guess!

 

-Ken

[mloser]

I have been using a DV vidcam so my pics are only 1 megapixel. I kept whatever the camera saved, but never even bothered to look. Shame that my hard drive crashed last night though, so I would have to say I don't keep anything! Ha

[+Kordite]

My camera is set at a "medium" resolution of 1280x960. I save every image I take in raw form to one folder and the modified images (cropped, reduced to 600x450 and sharpened) that I upload to geocaching.com to another folder.

 

When I have enough images, I archive it to a CD, clear out my hard drive and start over.

 

I recall reading an article about the change in journalism archives now that digital cameras are becoming more widespread. It used to be that photographers would take hundreds of pictures of which only one or two might get published. The negatives of all the rest would sit in a file cabinet somewhere and occasionally would be re-opened to find an image concerning a piece of history that hadn't seemed important at the time but that was now significant. Now, with digital cameras, photographers will throw away the "bad" images and only keep the good ones. A lot of history is being lost because it doesn't meet the photographer's artistic standard.

 

So, I've got a large capacity Compact Flash card, lots of hard drive space and cheap CDs. I can afford to keep everything. It may not be useful on my first pass but who knows what may be important in the future.

[+Black Dog Trackers]

I figure the GC.com site automatically downsizes pictures according to its criteria, so I never do the downsizing myself before uploading. Why bother?

 

Concerning resolution, I figure that 640x480 (~50k) is more than enough resolution for a close-up identification picture of a disk. It seems to me that a 3Megapixel picture for the lettering on a disk is way overblown.

 

For area pictures, some are quite nice, and I have even used a few benchmark area pictures as a computer screen background for a few days. These I downloaded from the geocaching site and set as background and they were of course limited by the site's criteria, but still they look good, even stretched full-screen.

[+Colorado Papa]

Concerning resolution, I figure that 640x480 (~50k) is more than enough resolution for a close-up identification picture of a disk.  It seems to me that a 3Megapixel picture for the lettering on a disk is way overblown.

I agree. All my pictures are 65-90K no matter if closeup or area shot. No need to get minuet detail when 99.9% of the pics will never be looked at for future reference. By then, the area will probably have changed again. But what they get is satisfactory for locating the mark if they need it. Frankly, in looking at the gallery, I think my 70K pics don't look any worse than the 3Meg pics. And I can pack a lot more of them on a CD.

 

Who is questioning whether you can read the disk or not? I don't believe there are cheaters among us since what do they have to gain? It's an ego thing if they want to brag they belong to the 100/100 club, or "I've got 21 different prefixes" or whatever. Me, I'll just keep plugging along doing something I enjoy and not worry about getting hi-resolution pictures.

[+FSU*Noles]

To answer Black Dog Trackers and Colorado Papa, one of the reasons I keep the *original* 3mp pictures of each Benchmark is to prove authenticity, if required. By resizing I lose the "metadata" that includes the timestamp, camera info, etc etc that might serve to prove I was there and took the picture rather than manipulating something in Photoshop. I know it's paranoia and pr'bly not necessary, but it's just the way I am.

 

Oh, also, to address the issue of letting the site resize - I know the site does the auto resize, but it doesn't do so until it uploads the entire ~3mb file. I batch-resize all of them, including the location shots, and it uploads the shots in MUCH less time over my shoddy connection.

 

So that's my thinking on those two issues, for what it's worth - lmk what you think, thanks!

 

-Ken

[+bons]

I take all photographs at the highest resolution possible and with the most detail possible and leave them in the original form.

 

This is because I don't know which photos "will never be looked at for future reference". Especially since I may use the photos someday for digital artwork. I also have a son who might want to use photos for a school project years from now, etc. etc.

 

Storage space is cheap. Lost data is irreplaceable.

Edited June 4, 2004 by bons