What size to email?

[Wayne02]

Hello,
I've been taking photo's at my sons soccer games all season (no official affiliation with the team, just a hobby & trying to get some good pics of my son)

We are down to one game left this weekend, and I have finally had a chance to go through all the pictures taken so far. It looks like there are a number of pictures of the other kids that are pretty good, and I think the parents might like to have them. I'm not interested in being compensated for them, I just hate to see a good picture go to waste.

Thought I'd just email the pictures to them, but had a couple questions. Do you think there is any harm in sending them an email with a couple pics of their sons? After reading some horror stories on the boards about angry parents because someone was taking pictures of their kids, I'm wondering if there is going to be a problem.

While I made no "announcements" that I would be taking pictures this year, I doubt people could have missed me with the big L lens and such. 80% of the photos I took were of my son, but if they action came my way I tried to capture some good shots of other kids. Anyway, Maybe I'm being overly concerned with this issue. I know if one of the parents got some good shots of my son I would appreciate it.

Second question is in regards to what size of photo I should email to them. The untouched photo is 3072x2048, 3.01 MB. Win XP email program allows you to reduce this size if desired to one of three sizes:
Small - 640x480, 60kb
Medium - 800x600, 80kb
Large - 1024x768, 114kb

Which size should I send? What size retains the best resolution to mailabiltiy ratio? What happens if they want to have one of them printed?

Thanks
Wayne

[gramps]

First I'd send the pics..............if there are parents that get upset I wouldn't want my kid playing with theirs!!!!!

2nd..........send small or medium. Alot of it depends on the net connection the other end has, if they are on dial up they don't want to wait for a long download. Also a smaller pic may be easier for them to handle and print.

[Hogleg 44]

I take pictures of my Granddaughters soccer games, and post the pictures online at Webshots.com where I bought a subscription for space. From that website I can send email invitations containing direct links to the albums (pictures) to anyone for whom I have an email address. Then they can make the choice to view or not to view.
And too, when the email is opened, you receive an email stating that that person opened the message. Kind if neat! I post albums of my hobby pics, birthday parties etc. and send invites to family and friends all over the country.
You might consider doing something like this using any of the online photo storage sites. I suppose they all offer about the same service.

[robertwgross]

Two ways:

(1) If I am trying to send somebody a perfect photo in full resolution so they can print from it, then I just convert the TIF to a JPEG with 10% compression.

(2) If I am trying to send somebody a photo to show them what I have, but I don't want to send full resolution so that they could get a good print, then I cut it down. I down-sample the TIF until its full size is 1.5 to 2 Mbytes. Then I do the JPEG compression with 10-15% compression factor. That generally yields a file of 50-150 Kbytes, and that slides through email quickly.

---Bob Gross---

[Andy_T]

(1) If I am trying to send somebody a perfect photo in full resolution so they can print from it, then I just convert the TIF to a JPEG with 10% compression.

Bob, wouldn't that be 100% compression?

Best regards,
Andy

[Wayne02]

Thanks guys. The pictures are in jpeg format currently. If somebody decides they want to print one of the shots, can I just send them the full 3.01mb 3072x2048 file? Is it even possible to email a file that size?

I do have a smugmug account, but I've been hesitant to put any kids pictures on there without first having it cleared with the parents. Some parents seem to be sensitive about having their kids pictures on the internet. It's not a big deal to me, I have several of my sons on there, but some folks seem to have a problem with it I guess.[shrug]

If I do this again next year, I should probably just tell everyone before hand that the shots will be on smugmug and available for download. That would be much easier to manage for me.

Wayne

[Meerkat17]

Wayne,
Why don't you do it through Canon Image Gateway - its secure and only the people you send the invite to view can view them.

Also, you say that there is one game left - why not print out some flyers with your e-mail address on and and details on what you have been doing and hand them out at the last game. This way if any parents are interested then they can contact you and you can send them an invite.

This way its more secure and the photos of their kids are not on an open server for the world to see.

Hope this helps

David

[robertwgross]

(1) If I am trying to send somebody a perfect photo in full resolution so they can print from it, then I just convert the TIF to a JPEG with 10% compression.

Bob, wouldn't that be 100% compression?

Best regards,
Andy

I do not use PhotoShop, and my perhaps my editor uses different terms to describe compression. Here, the best image is Zero % compression, and the worst is 100% compression. As a general rule, if I compress at 10%, then I am discarding only the tiniest amount of image data, and it can't be detected very easily. If I do 5% compression, then the JPEG file starts to get much larger in a hurry, and I can't see any difference. Anything better than 5% compression, like 3% compression, is a total waste of disk space.

---Bob Gross---

[Wayne02]

Hmm,
The flier deal might work. Part of the issue is I don't have candids of all 17 players, so there might be some disappointed parents if the fliers are making their way around the sidelines this Sunday. I also was trying to get this wrapped up this week.

I sent five shots of the coaches son to him this evening. I sent them in small format 640x480, stating that I could send them a higher resolution version if they wanted to make prints. His wife responded asking for high resolution versions of all five shots (presumably to make prints I guess).

What size should I send? The originals are the large jpeg format from the rebel. What size is that, 3072x2048? File size is 3.2MB. I just printed one on my old color printer and it looked pretty good. A 3.2mb file is pretty big though...

I will check out the Canon gateway service. My sons basketball season just started and I will be taking photos at the games. I for-see the same type of distribution issue at the end of the basketball season if I don't set-up something like that.

Thanks
Wayne

[Wayne02]

My how taking a few photo's can complicate ones life. I had sent four photo's to the coach for verification of kids names before sending them out to parents, plus a few of his own kid, and a couple "coaching shots". He was thrilled with the photos and is requesting all that I have (of any of the kids) from this year, at high resolution put on cd's. Said he would pay whatever it costs.

Thought about just making 17 copies of the cd (with all kids on it) and giving one to each parent. The drawback I see to this is not everyone's kid has a photo. Seems like it would kind of suck to get a cd with everyone's else's kid on it except yours... Yeah, I could just give a cd to those parents whom I had shots for, but this is a pretty tight group, and by the end of the day the parents who didn't get a cd would be well aware of it.

Now I feel kind of obligated to take the camera to the last game this Sunday and try to capture some of the kids that I don't have shots for. The season ending party is 3 hours after the last game (probably the last time I'll see the parents until next year), even if I was able to actually get some shots of the missing kids, I doubt my system could burn 17 cd's with a bunch of 3MB pictures in 3 hours.

How did I get myself into this...

Wayne