7D Prefered MP Size During Family Shots

I was bored trying to get thoughts on how other people use their 7D.Im currently shooting max 18mp raw.Usually get good results.Came across Ken Rockwells 7D tips/tricks ect.Heres an something i havent thought of at this point until now.

Image Size
No one really needs 18MP. All it does is slow everything and clog your hard drive, unless you're printing 10 feet wide.
Try shooting your 7D at its M (8MP) or S (4.5MP) settings. If you look at your images at 100%, you'll see that the lower resolution shots are sharper pixel-by-pixel!
When I'm photographing family and friends, I shoot at SMALL JPG. Even SMALL is good enough for great 20x30" prints.
The smaller-sized images out of the 7D are spectacular. They are sharper and cleaner than images from cameras on which that is their native resolution. The 7D always starts with 18MP, so it looks pretty good when you set the 7D to record at only 8MP or 4.5MP.
Why? Because they use less, or no, Bayer interpolation. No digital camera really resolves its rated resolution; they cheat and interpolate up, so at 100% at its rated resolution, no digital camera image is as sharp as a true scan from film.
At the 4.5MP setting, you have 100% R, G and B pixels, exactly as if you were using a Sigma Foveon sensor. If Sigma was selling this, they'd sell the 4.5MP (S) setting as if it were 13.5MP (also a lie).
What this means is that the lower resolution settings actually pack away lot more detail than you think. The S (4.5MP) setting of the 7D is a lot sharper than any 4.5MP camera.
M looks almost as good as L for the same reason.
If you're testing lenses, sure, shoot at L, but for everything else, try the settings for yourself, You'll probably get what you need at the smaller settings. For instance, the 11MP setting of the 7D has way more detail than any of the 12MP (native) Nikon cameras.
The resolution advantage of the 7D is obvious, even at lower settings. Try them.

Can anyone relate to what hes saying?Is this true?I guess i always thought more was better.I never print out those large of prints(8x10) at the biggest.I guess my main question is - Are they sharper at lower res?Thanks for any and all thoughts.

Im shooting an Eagle Scout cermoney sunday in a white church with a great big open glass window directly behind the subjects(grrrr).Heres my quick setup--- Manual -F5.6-8.0 - shutter 1/200-auto iso-no flash(big church)AFservo - 19pt AF.Usually does decent at this church.I have to clean up some noise but not too bad.I know its alot to digest but they all seem related at this point for what im trying to do.Thanks

Heres a link to the full article.
http://www.kenrockwell​.com/canon/7d/users-guide/

He also advises you to ignore raw and just shoot jpg. What about cropping? What happens if someone wants to buy your images for another use?

Just invest in more hard drives and don't limit yourself for the sake of it.

Yetihenry wrote in post #15355345
He also advises you to ignore raw and just shoot jpg. What about cropping? What happens if someone wants to buy your images for another use?

Just invest in more hard drives and don't limit yourself for the sake of it.

^ this

And who listens to ken rockwell anyway

Anyway, I shoot full raw. if I start running out of hard drive space, I delete some old files or get a bigger drive If you shoot at smaller megapickels, sure it looks fine full frame size - but then what if you need to crop? You have just slashed your cropping room by half. At least with 18mp, you have room to breathe

Thanks for your reply.I totally agree.Hard drive space isnt the problem at this point.But that wasnt my main concern.My settings versus kens and or both is my main concern .Thanks

The best thing you can do to improve your photography is learn that not everything you read on the internet is true, sane, practical, rational, logical, creative, artistic, interesting, relevant, or useful.
Ken Rockwell is the best possible example of this.

Ignoring him and his site will give a 100% improvement.

Shoot at 18mp raw. Post process normally. At the final stage if you want to downsize and do a little output sharpening you will achieve and likely surpass any results he has obtained.

Shoot at whatever you want. Whatever is enough. If like most people you tend to keep many shots you can't decide If you like enough or not, you wind up with a lot of used up drive space for nothing.
If you want family shots, 8MP is plenty. Yes is true drive space is cheap, but then again why keep whay you really don't need or want. A lot of it is slopppiness or just plain laziness to go through your images. Not meant for just you but everyone.
If your a pro thats different, you KNOW what you want. For the rest of us its just overkill. We really don't need anything more than 12MP.
But as I said its your camera, shoot what you want, besides who says you have to shoot everything at the same setting? Thats why the Manufacturers gave us all those great options in the first place.

Shoot full size RAW and be done with it. Go buy more hardrives, heck you can buy a 3tb external seagate for $150. I bought 4 of these and they are in my computer right now.

Ken is a doofus... He often comes up with strange evaluations and has "reviews" on his site for lenses Canon hasn't even released yet. Everything he writes should be taken with a grain of salt.

Unless you have a shortage of memory cards or hard drives, I see no reason not to shoot RAW and convert to whatever size you want later, toss bad images, or keep them... whatever. I buy hard disks for about $50-60 a terrabyte and each TB will hold over 20,000 7D RAW files. That's pretty cheap storage.

Wouldn't it be the pits to be out shooting a family pic with camera set to small/high compression JPEG and suddenly Elvis and Jimmy Hoffa walk by?