How much memory to take on a trip…
…is a decision that all digital photographers face at some point, pro and amateur alike. If you’re a pro and determine through experience that you need more memory than you already have, the answer is to buy more of your preferred memory cards and bake some or all of the price into what you charge your client. If you’re a traveler on a budget and new to the world of digital photography beyond what your phone covers, the answer isn’t that simple. You need to estimate how much you need with no frame of reference other that the somewhat misleading charts offered on package labeling. Read on and I’ll try to help.
Quality and resolution:
How many pictures can you put on a card? Obviously, one factor is the size of the card but you still need to know how large the image files will be to get a decent estimate. A common mistake digital newbies would make back in the early days is to read the manual and without any clue as to what the numbers meant, they would say, “The manual says that on the “S” setting I can fit 22,000 pictures on one 4GB card!” While that might be technically true for 640×480 VGA images, the post-vacation results would have comments more like, “This camera sucks! The pictures are all fuzzy when I have them printed!” I’ll try to explain the how and why of resolution and image quality settings and give my humble suggestions on how to make an informed decision on what’s best for you.
In a digital camera there are two major factors that affect quality. These are image size (resolution) and compression (quality).
Image Size (resolution):
Digital cameras capture light on a sensor made up of tiny light sensitive dots that translate into pixels on the final image. Simply put, the resolution of a camera sensor is the number of dots, or pixels, side to side multiplied by the number of pixels up and down. If that number equals a million, the sensor’s resolution is one megapixel (MP). Marketing departments have made the megapixel a household word and it is the measuring stick that we now use to measure the ability of a camera to capture detail. More dots = more resolution = more detail. With some exceptions, this holds true. (You may want to read my article on camera parts for more detail.)
Let’s turn those dots, or pixels into something easy to relate to. The resolution of your personal viewing device is a good place to start since you will probably use it the most to view your pictures and their resolution is also measured in MP. Most newer laptop screens and PC monitors under about 24” have an HD resolution of 1920 x 1200 (2.3 MP), though some larger models have 4k resolution. If you own a hi-resolution 27″ or larger graphics monitor, 2560 x 1600 (4 MP) is common with 3840 x 2160 4K UHD resolution (8.3MP) also becoming mainstream. Why on earth would you ever need more than maybe 12MP?
Because.
Prints are another common destination for digital photos. Regardless of the mechanical resolution, most printers work with files that are sized to print at 240-300 DPI, or Dots Per Inch (a leftover term from offset printing…the use of computers makes PPI or Pixels Per Inch a more common reference nowadays.) At 300 PPI, the individual dots on the print are supposed to be beyond the resolution of the unaided human eye, so prints made at this resolution appear as smooth, “photo quality” pictures. What this means is a 4” x 6” standard print needs to be 1,200 pixels high by 1800 pixels (2.16 MP) to appear clear and sharp like a print made from film. An 8” x 10” print needs to be 2,400 high by 3,000 wide (7.2 MP). A 16” x 20” is 28.8MP and a 20 x 24” is 43.2MP. Now we have some reference points and begin to see why 10MP or more can come in handy.
Just to clarify, you don’t need a 1:1 ratio between file size and print size to get a good print. I have several 24” x 36” metal prints from a 24MP original and even a 40” x 60” landscape from a 12MP original. Images can be resized quite a bit using software like Photoshop or the output driver on sophisticated printers before the clarity starts to suffer. Even then a little loss of clarity doesn’t really hurt. A 40” x 60” image isn’t meant to be viewed from two feet away, no matter what the pixel-peepers say.
You also have to consider the value of higher resolution when cropping. The ability to choose the interesting part of an image and maintain enough quality to display or print makes all those extra pixels handy.
Quality
No, the quality setting in the menu doesn’t mean you can set your camera to only take and keep good pictures…yet the “quality” of a digital image refers to how much the software in the camera compresses the image before it stores it. The image format used by virtually every digital camera today is JPEG (pronounced jay-peg – your picture files will have a .jpg extension). JPEG originated as an ISO standard (International Organization for Standardization) for the compression of digital images in 1990 and was written by the Joint Photographic Experts Group, hence the name. The JPEG in use today is not quite the same, but the name stuck. I guess it was easy to pronounce.
To understand image compression, I suppose we will have to put on our propeller hats and take a quick look at how digital images are stored. Each pixel is represented in an image file as a number that tells the computer what color it is and how bright it should be. In an un-compressed image like a bitmap (.bmp) or a TIFF (.tif), each pixel has a place and is reproduced whenever the file is opened. The code is written to the file as “pixel code” x “number of pixels”, so all 10 MP image files, for instance, will be exactly the same size. This will become relevant in a moment.
Each pixel is encoded as a numerical value. The value for a reading of a particular shade of red at x brightness will be the same no matter what camera it was taken on.
In a simple, understandable world, bitmap file code would go like this:
Row 1, Pixel 1 = 234; Row 1, Pixel 2 = 236; Row 1, Pixel 3 = 236; Row 1, Pixel 4 = 245;…
Row 2, Pixel 1 = 234; Row 2, Pixel 2 = 234; Row 2, Pixel 3 = 236; Row 2, Pixel 4 = 245;…
Etc., etc, etc.
In a JPEG, the encoding software saves space by combining similar pixels together and eliminating the need for coding each pixel separately. Like this:
Row 1, Pixel 1 = 234; Row 1, Pixel 2-3 = 236; Row 1, Pixel 4 = 245;…
Row 2, Pixel 1-2 = 234; Row 2, Pixel 3 = 236; Row 2, Pixel 4 = 245;…
Etc. x 3…
As you can see, even in my tinker-toy representation of the code, the system saves space, a lot of it! Woo-hoo…something for nothing! Well, not quite. The example above only combines identical pixels (lossless). In the real world of compression, the software averages the values of similar pixels to save even more space (lossy).
Sort of like this:
Row 1, Pixel 1-3 = 235; Row 1, Pixel 4 = 245;…
Row 2, Pixel 1-3 = 235; Row 2, Pixel 4 = 245;…
Etc. x 3…
When the file is opened after compression, pixels 1-3 which were averaged to a middle value are all displayed as that average value, losing their original value. This sounds really bad using my little example, but in practice, an image file supports millions of color levels and the combination of dozens of levels is usually undetectable. The exception to this happens when you edit an original file and re-save it several times. Opening and closing to view a JPEG file does nothing, so don’t worry about killing your pictures by looking at them. If, however, you edit and save the file, it will be recompressed and data will be lost each time. After several edits and saves, even a high quality JPEG can exhibit degradation. I always edit a copy even when using image processing software like Photoshop which has an option for lossless compression. Another seeming oddity of compression is that images with a lot of similar adjacent areas, such as a scene with a solid color background will compress more than an image with a wide variety of colors and details. That’s why your frame counter may show 50 shots left and you get 35 -70 more. Your camera isn’t stupid, it is just averaging your file sizes and giving you a guide to go by.
The reason you have different quality settings is so you can decide how much image quality you want to trade for file size reduction. The higher the quality setting, the more of the original image info is retained and the larger the file. As you reduce the quality, less and less of the original image info is retained and the smaller the file gets.
For maximum compression effect in the following example, I used a small section of a photo taken with a 6MP DSLR camera and saved as the highest quality JPEG. The cut-out was saved at highest, medium and lowest quality settings in Photoshop to illustrate the effect of compression.
Hmmm… not much difference is there? Lets look really close, as if you wanted to make a 11 x 14 enlargement from a 5MP original:
At this point, the image degradation becomes noticeable. At the lowest setting, the colors are showing blotchiness, there’s noticeable pixelization and diagonal lines are becoming jagged. That means that there is, after all, a moral to this story…
The Scenario:
You have purchased a 24MP digital camera and are ready to travel, see the world, and bring it all back home to show friends and family. You want to make a DVD slide show of your best shots and some prints for the scrapbook. To do this you need to take enough memory to store all those once-in-a-lifetime shots. Your camera is a good one that has many menu options for setting resolution (image size) and quality (compression).
The Question: “How much memory should I bring?”
The Answer: “It depends…” With all the variables in camera’s image processors and though JPEG is a standard, the amount of compression determined by each manufacturer’s “standards” can vary considerably. This means there really aren’t any reliable constants you can go by. You really do have to learn a little about your camera before you can guess at an answer.
Resolution settings:
The largest file your camera will record; ALWAYS! If your camera is 24MP, shoot at 24MP. If you think that a 12MP setting is good enough, then you should have bought a used 12MP camera and saved some money. You can reduce the size of a 24 MP picture to 640 x 480 to e-mail it but enlarging a 640 x 480 image to print a 5 x 7 will always look bad. (If you’re thinking that the good guys on CSI can really get portrait quality images of a suspect from a convenience store security camera, then I have a whole list of things that I would like to sell you!) Making a small image bigger always loses quality. As mentioned before, loss of quality may be acceptably small, but enlarging will always mean a loss.
Quality settings:
As you can see in the examples above, the difference between the highest and standard quality is not that great. In almost all cases, a print made at the highest quality image setting in most cameras will be virtually indistinguishable from a print made from a standard quality image. Unless you are a working professional who doesn’t use RAW* and may need to make enlargements of any picture at any time, standard compression is very useable and will save a lot of space. That is not to say to never use the highest quality. Personally, I always use the highest setting. If you can afford the space, it is the best choice. Remember, you can always re-compress files to save space where the highest quality isn’t needed, but it is a one-way-street! Once compressed, the image data that was discarded to achieve greater compression is gone forever! If you never print and only view your images on screens, choosing a lower quality setting can save some space but considering that memory is so darned cheap these days, it’s hard to justify.
*Refer to my article on RAW vs. JPEG for detail on RAW.
My recommendations:
• Set your camera to take the largest image available.
• Use high or standard quality (but never lowest).
• Consult your manual. See how many pictures will fit on your chosen size of card or better yet, simply plug the card into the camera and see what the frame counter says. Better yet, crank off a bunch of pictures for a real world test. I say “a bunch” because you want a realistic average since file size can vary by as much as 50% due to compression. If you take 50 pictures of everything around the house, including scenes with a lot of solid colors and some with a lot of small details and different colors, you should get a good working average. If you plan on shooting video too, do a separate test at the resolution you plan to shoot at, record a few minutes, check the file size and do the math.
• Buy enough memory to store 1½ to 2 times the number of photos you think you’ll take. If you plan to take 50 pictures a day (keep in mind that that would be high by film standards and in general, low for digital) and you’re going on a 7-day vacation, plan on 350 pictures x 2 = 700. Test for average file size with your camera on your chosen settings, do the math and buy accordingly.
• When in doubt, buy too much. $20 for a relatively fast 64GB card at home beats $40 for a cheap 32GB card on a cruise ship or at a resort…if it is available at all. Memory is as common as film now but depending on where you are, the cost per GB can go up by a factor of four (or more) if you need more while traveling.
• Don’t forget that memory is reusable and, in the long run, cheap! So you spent $100 – $200 on memory. Next trip, you already have it and you can start averaging the cost downward, trip after trip. Memory cards will eventually degrade from too many read/write cycles but filling a card and emptying it 10,000 times before worrying about this makes the issue mostly irrelevant.
• Buy quality memory. Agonizing about spending the extra $20-$50 on good, fast memory after you just plunked down $800-$3000 on a camera is to me, the definition of false economy. Spending $5 with free shipping for a no-name 32GB card on eBay seems like a good deal vs. $15-$20 for the same size SanDisk Extreme, Transcend, Sony or another major brand. Getting a “Card Not Useable” error on your LCD while on a $20,000 trip to Antarctica eats up those savings in a hurry. Keep in mind that eBay maintains a large number of guides on how to spot counterfeit memory card sellers since they make up a 90%+ majority of eBay memory retailers.
• Buy a protective case. Memory cards are relatively tiny and can get lost easily. A $10-$15 case is cheap insurance and can help keep track of card status. Full cards go face down in my case and empties, face up.
• Get the fastest memory you can afford. This is very relative. While a U3-rated 95 MB/s card is pretty fast and will keep up with most cameras in most situations (including 4k video) a faster 170MB/s or even a 300MB/s card will shorten the time it takes to store a burst of images and reduces the possibility of dropped frames when shooting video. Even if your camera won’t write to a card at more than 95 MB/s when recording video or shooting a burst of images, you can save yourself a lot of time offloading multiple gigabytes with a good USB 3.x reader when you get back to home base. Faster memory is also subject to stricter quality control.
• Here’s the most important tip so far: You’re on a trip with a camera…don’t forget to HAVE FUN and TAKE PICTURES!
Dave