I purchased a Canon A570is last week. It comes with 2, 3, 5, and 7 meg resolution. Furthermore, three levels of compression, N, Fine, and SuperFine, within each resolution.

Since owning a 2M for the past four years, I want to take photos with 7Meg and superfine settings which consume lots of storage comparing to 5Meg with Fine setting. I searched the web which mostly suggested to use the lower resolutions and higher compression (lower quality) as long as viewing was done on the computer console or printing 4x6.

Please share your experiences with the various resolution and compression settings.

I would think it would depend HIGHLY on what you're planning on doing with the photos. I have a 5 MP HP and take pictures on the 'standard' setting and was able to blow up a print to 16x20 and I don't see any pixelation. Even the leaves on the palm tress are pretty clearly defined. Could it be better if I'd sucked up more memory? Probably, but even with my face up right next to the picture, I have a hard time seeing any issues iwth it (and I probaly cropped it some, too.)

So I think the answer depends HIGHLY on what you're going to do with it.

My own view is that storage is so cheap now that using the highest quality settings is generally the best choice. That particular camera uses SD cards and you can get a 2GB card for about $20. You can also get 4GB cards for around $40, but I'm not sure if that camera can use cards that large (some older models can't). Even at the highest quality setting, a 2GB card can hold hundreds of photos.

Of course, you would also need more storage on your computer when you use the higher settings, but that isn't a big deal any longer either. Just a couple weeks ago, I added a new 500GB hard drive to my computer and it cost about $100.

You may never need the higher resolution photos, but I think it is better to keep that option available. You can always scale high resolution photos down if you want to upload them to the web or email them, but you can't scale low resolution pictures upwards if you later decide that you really want a large print-out or something else that requires high resolution.

-Jeff

To go along with what Jeff said, the only drawback I have seen with larger size files is that if you use an online photo service such as Winkflash, Snapfish, or similar, your upload time can drag out a bit, even with high speed services. Now, granted, your mileage may vary on this, if it is even applicable, but still.

For comparison about how many pictures you can get on a card... I have a Sony P10 which is 5 MP and I always keep it on fine resolution. A 1GB card will let me store about 400 pictures and then some. (About 2 MB per pic on average.)