new XTi pics

[surfnvb7]

just got a new cannon XTi a couple weeks ago (my first real camera).

i know nothing about photography before, so i've done alot of reading and practice taking pictures. still have no idea what most of the functions do or mean, so most of these that are in great focus seem to be *luck*. :lol:

just using the kit lense, in AV mode, aperature around 1/8 (although i cant really tell the difference b/w 1/20), 100-200 ISO, AWB. using a nice tripod with the pumps off and clean glass etc.
took them in RAW, but no changes in these pics other than cropping and shrinking the picture size.

 

[surfnvb7]

i do have a question about converting pics, and shrinking them into a viewable sizes.

i've noticed that when i do this, the pictures seem to get more fuzzy than when i had them open in RAW mode in the program that came with the camera.

all i did was crop a section out, and then shrink it to fit in 800x600 area. yet its fuzzier than when i had it open in raw and zoomed in.

also, when converting pics, there seems to be an option for DPI. i've kept it on the default setting which is 350dpi. does this make any difference for pictures viewable on a monitor?

so...i convert from RAW to JPEG, crop, then shrink to resize. would it make any difference to resize while i'm converting from RAW to JPEG......and THEN crop and resize? doing it by the second method it seems i need to enlarge rather than shrink the final image to fit 800x600.

 

[gregr]

Nice pics- and you've got some sweet corals there
Generally speaking, when you make pictures smaller by resizing them they usually need a little sharpening (or unsharp mask). When you crop you usually lose a little (or a lot, depending on how much you crop) quality, and if you crop and then make the picture bigger you lose a lot of quality. Ideally you crop very little or not at all, but that's tough without a real macro lens.
I'm not sure if resizing during the conversion makes a difference- I doubt it. One thing though- every time you save a jpeg you lose information/quality, so it's best to edit in a lossless format like tiff. I convert to tiff, then in Photoshop, resize, do all image adjustments and then the final step is to convert to jpeg via save-for-web.
For internet jpeg viewing the dpi is 72- anything greater than that is not needed. If you plan on printing the file then you need the higher dpi.

 

[Dino]

Here is an article so you can begin to understand the DPI/PPI equation...

Learn how to use the right DPI for Printing or On-Screen Graphics - Making Sense of the DPI Equation

DPI and PPI can get confusing regarding where each comes into play and how they effect (and don't) eachother. And also depending on your final uses for an image will also determine how each plays into your post processing.