Camera Settings

[julieanne]

I've used a digital camera for a few years now - a Nikon Coolpix 775 (I think [msnembarrased])

When I was charging battery last night I noticed the picture settings were on Normal/XGA.
Is this ok for very very basic point & shoot holiday snaps??

Sorry but I'm a bit of dummy when it comes to these things [msnembarrased]

[LiesaAnna]

your not the only one Julie, am sure snapper will help you?

[domster]

Yes Snapper is the man (Guru) on cameras. From what I know XGA is the worst setting to have your camera on for quality.

On this setting it will allow you to get plenty of pictures onto the memory card, but if you want good quality you need to set to the cameras max pixel rate.

I have just ordered another memory card to allow me to use 5MP and this gives much better picture resolution. But means I can only get 10 pics on a 32Meg memory card.

hope this helps

[Snapper]

I think Dom's right with that. I think the XGA setting will capture the photo at 1024x768 pixels (about .7 megapixels-ish). It's a format I think that was devised for capturing for display on an XGA (eXtended vGA) computer monitor which typically runs at this resolution.

My own view on anything digital is to capture at the highest possible detail setting. If your camera has a fine or super-fine setting that's the one I would use. Whatever is the one at the other end of the image setting scale from the XGA setting.

It's always a trade-off between how high a resolution to capture vs. the number of photos that will fit on a flash card. The price of flash cards has dropped so much recently that the 256Mb and 512Mb ones are now very affordable.

If there is one golden rule that none of us can get away from it's that once the camera goes snap that's the most detail that the image will ever have. From that point onwards you can take detail away, but if you don't capture it in the first place you can't re-create it afterwards.

I have seen some of Steve's 'snaps' and they are truly amazing[clap][clap][clap][clap]

[domster]

he is such a Guru!!

Infact we have 2 on the same thread. Lucy is our flight expert!

[julieanne]

Thanks everyone - I'll try and change my settings [msneek]

[phaedra]

Hi

Sorry I didn't see this sooner, XGA is the Nikons Medium setting, it should be on Full (1600x1200) and the Quality set to Fine,

Here's a link to Steves Digicams showing the actual LCD menu you'll see,

http://www.steves-digicams.com/2001_...on775_pg3.html