The Digital Photography Companion

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COMPRESSION AND IMAGE QUALITY

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Go high, go low Change your camera angle when working a shot. Get low on the

ground and shoot upward. Raise the camera over your head and shoot down—swiv-

eling lenses and LCD monitors make this easier than ever.

Simple is better Try not to clutter your compositions with nonessential elements.

Keep things simple, move in close, and find an interesting arrangement.

Compression and Image Quality

Another way in which digital cameras differ from their film counterparts is that they ac-

tually let you set the quality of the image via the compression or image quality setting. All

digital cameras save images as some form of Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG)

file. If you’ve worked with JPEGs, you know that you can save them at various quality

levels, usually from 1 to 12. A JPEG saved at level 1 has both very poor quality and a very

small file size. It’s said to be highly compressed. e same file saved at level 12 has excel-

lent image quality, but the corresponding file size is larger. It’s minimally compressed.

Your digital camera gives you some of these same options in the compression or im-

age quality setting, which is usually one of the first items you’ll see when you open the

onscreen menu. Instead of providing you with number values such as “3,” “6,” and “9,”

cameras use terms such as basic, normal, and fine or normal, fine ...