The quality of your photographs relies on proper settings and we have discussed most of those. There are two other settings that are absolutely paramount in determining the quality of your results. The first is usually referred to as the IMAGE-RECORDING QUALITY. In most cameras, there are about six levels of quality to choose from. The highest level of quality requires the most "space" within your available memory, and the lowest quality option requires the least. Using my camera as an example, the very highest quality level will allow about 275 photos on a 1GB memory device. The very lowest level will allow you about 1,450. I find it unthinkable that someone would need room for more than 275 pictures in one day. The price for memory devices is now low enough that most people buying a digital camera will get a 3GB-4GB from the outset...doing so would allow for over 1,000 exposures on your memory device. My total point, here, is that it makes no sense to buy a fairly expensive camera and then to "tell it" to take low-quality pictures! Other than the size of the file for this photo, there are absolutely no reasons to specify low quality recording. Further, regardless of the software you use, you can NOT create a higher quality file later...if you don't record it initially, you can't regain it later.

The setting here is a no-brainer...select the largest file size with the highest quality level!

The second part of these critical settings actually occurs outside the camera. Most of us download our photos to our computer and edit them there. Regardless of how much, or how little, you change the photo (cropping, exposure, etc.) when you have finished and before your computer obeys your command to close and save this modified picture file, it will query you as to the desired level of quality at which you would like the file saved. ALWAYS SELECT THE ABSOLUTE HIGHEST LEVEL!!! I can't emphasize this enough! If you have gone to the trouble to get the very highest levels of quality in your photos, you certainly don't want to wipe it all out here. It will negate all that you have done!

Several years ago, I shot a couple of photos of the same half-dollar coin. They were shot on a kitchen counter with the camera mounted on a tripod. Lighting was identical...the only variable was the quality settings on the camera and the quality settings on the computer at the "save" level.

This was shot with camera's IMAGE RECORDING QUALITY set at it's LOWEST quality setting and then saved at it's lowest level.

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And this one was shot at the highest levels for both.

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Both photos were shot with only the ambient indirect light from an adjacent window. Incidentally, using my own photos and my own desktop, even after four years of storing my photos, it tells me that there is still space available for over 40,000 more photos. I strongly encourage that you select the highest levels of quality available to you!

Thanks,

Bob