Digital camera image prefs?

I've seen some number of excellent digital images taken with a number of different cameras, but I'm curious about the file formats and sizes you all prefer to use.

I have a Olympus Camedia C-4040 4.1 MP, and have become interested in the idea of doing some macro shots outside and was curious about your views.

I usually have the camera presets at F2.0, 1/100, 35mm zoom, ISO 200, .tiff image size is 1024x768



Cheers, eh...


C.C.

It depends what I'm shooting, and what the ultimate target is.

If it's just general shots to play around with the camera and all the images are intended or the screen, I use Jpeg-Fine in the camera's smallest image size (1504x1000 pixels). Which is like 1.5MP.

If I need the highest quality possible for print, or just general sharpness where I only need to use a portion of the image, and not just scale the image down, I use with RAW (approx 12Meg/file) or uncompressed TIF (approx 20-25Meg each) files, at the largest image size, 3008x2000 (6.1MP).

With regard to aperture, exposure, lens length & film emulation speed, it entirely depends on the subject.

Outdoors in Florida sunshine, I can take photos at ISO200 emulation at 1/2000th of a second at f/5.6 @ 80mm...

Indoors with crappy artificial lights + built-in flash + Nikon SB-50DX flash, it's fastest flash sync is 1/180th of a second, so I have to really have the aperture open as wide as possible, and ramp it to ISO400 (sometimes even ISO800 or ISO1600 or more) depending on the distance of the subject from the flashes.

Outside, in bright florida sunshine, I'd still probably use a flash as fill flash, to make shadows less harsh, which means I'm again limited to 1/180th of a second, at ISO200 - which can be too bright. Without the flash, like I said above, I can get as fast as 1/2000th sec on ISO200.

The camera will go up to 1/8000th of a second at its fastest speed, but you gotta have a supernova goin' on in the background to be able to light that, lol.

Outside, I go with cloudy-3 white balance. Indoors with artificial lighting (either static or flash), I will calibrate my own preset white balance.

This is on a Nikon D100, with MB-D100, usually the Nikon Nikkor 28-80mm f/3.3-5.6AF-G lens.

Thanks for the quick response

You seem to more the avid photo fan than I
I do appreciate you posting your preferred settings.


Cheers, eh...


C.C.

Oops, turns out I was slightly wrong, the Nikon D100 only goes to 1/4000th second max exposure (according to the stats on the Nikon site). Perhaps it's my Nikon N90s that does 1/8000th sec.

Ahh well... There's still a bunch of stuff on my to-buy list..

I probably need about another $1000-1500 to buy the basics that I "need" to buy. The "wants" total about 40-50 grand