Fine or Normal when shooting Jpegs?

I have 40D. Lets say I want to shoot Jpegs and not RAW. I tried Fine and Normal, and then I pixelpeeped but I cannot detect any visible difference between the photos taken at Fine and Normal. Obviously compression is different so is size of the file. Large Normal JPEGS are under 2MB which is often convenient for example for uploading (there are sites that restrict to uploading under 2MB) and other purposes such as emailing etc...if I does not want to deal with Photoshop. My question is just that, can anyone really detect a difference in quality with naked eye between Normal and Fine?

Probably not but if you were to subject each to repeated edit/save cycles (since jpg is a lossy format) I would think the "Normal" jpg would start to get ratty a touch sooner than the "Fine" one would.

I haven't found much of a diff between fine and normal, so I've been shooting normal for quite a while now. It's like half the size!

You will notice most if you pixel-peep areas of gently-graded tones, where you might see blocking of adjacent pixels, as the compression saves space by saying 'this pixel is x,y,z colour, and the next 6 are the same'. I have seen it in jpeg fine, and that is the main reason I always shoot RAW these days, unless I know I'm only doing a shot for small-scale use.

memory is sooooo cheap these days.....

Memory cards are so cheap tese days that I cannot see why anyone would want to shoot in any but the highest quality mode. As an example of how cheap memory can be; I just purchased three Lexar professional UDMA 300x 4-GB CF cards from Calumet Photo for $73.99 each and they have a Lexar rebate of $70.00 each. That ends up to be just about $1.00 per Gigabyte (plus state sales tax of course...).

RPCrowe wrote in post #6661090
Memory cards are so cheap tese days that I cannot see why anyone would want to shoot in any but the highest quality mode. As an example of how cheap memory can be; I just purchased three Lexar professional UDMA 300x 4-GB CF cards from Calumet Photo for $73.99 each and they have a Lexar rebate of $70.00 each. That ends up to be just about $1.00 per Gigabyte (plus state sales tax of course...).

For me, it's not really the CF cards... it's a hundreds of thousands of photos i have on my computer that take up ridiculous amounts of space. I look for ANY way to reduce the sizes of the files I have to store. It gets a little tiring buying 500GB drives ever 4 months, and trying to remember which drive you had a certain shot on. Which is why I shoot jpeg whenever I can.

picturecrazy wrote in post #6661215
I look for ANY way to reduce the sizes of the files I have to store.

Is this not akin to buying a Ferrari then never driving above 3000rpm's because doing so will increase fuel consumption? Why buy a camera with potential performance if you don't fully utilise it?

picturecrazy wrote in post #6661215
For me, it's not really the CF cards... it's a hundreds of thousands of photos i have on my computer that take up ridiculous amounts of space. I look for ANY way to reduce the sizes of the files I have to store. It gets a little tiring buying 500GB drives ever 4 months, and trying to remember which drive you had a certain shot on. Which is why I shoot jpeg whenever I can.

Wouldnt it be easier/more economical/safer to burn those files to DVD instead of relying on removable harddrives?!? Plus DVD is a very easy way to catalog files since you can simply write date ranges or event names on the disk before putting it away...

RPCrowe wrote in post #6661090
Memory cards are so cheap tese days that I cannot see why anyone would want to shoot in any but the highest quality mode. As an example of how cheap memory can be; I just purchased three Lexar professional UDMA 300x 4-GB CF cards from Calumet Photo for $73.99 each and they have a Lexar rebate of $70.00 each. That ends up to be just about $1.00 per Gigabyte (plus state sales tax of course...).

They updated that rebate to be only a $20 rebate.

You probably will not get the $70 check for each, fyi.........

picturecrazy wrote in post #6661215
For me, it's not really the CF cards... it's a hundreds of thousands of photos i have on my computer that take up ridiculous amounts of space. I look for ANY way to reduce the sizes of the files I have to store. It gets a little tiring buying 500GB drives ever 4 months, and trying to remember which drive you had a certain shot on. Which is why I shoot jpeg whenever I can.

You have hundreds of thousands of keepers every 4 months ? I haven't had that many in my entire lifetime and I've been shooting for over 20 years. Mind you, I don't do it for a living.

How do you catalog them ?

haydskies wrote in post #6661737
Is this not akin to buying a Ferrari then never driving above 3000rpm's because doing so will increase fuel consumption? Why buy a camera with potential performance if you don't fully utilise it?

Probably because the more compressed JPEGs are good enough for the clients. The compression that is done on JPEGs doesn't do much damage until you drop down past the top slot or two.

We hobbiests can afford to shoot RAW + JPEG fine and save both forever if we wish. I can imagine people shooting loads of stuff professionally who need to keep the files are content with a touch of compression.

JeffreyG wrote in post #6662103
We hobbiests can afford to shoot RAW + JPEG fine and save both forever if we wish. I can imagine people shooting loads of stuff professionally who need to keep the files are content with a touch of compression.

I see it the other way around. Hobbyists should be content with compression since they don't print 24x36 pictures. Professionals should save RAW + JPEG fine when they need to quickly display content to a client or quickly edit, versus saving all the data for a future, proper post processing.

twiggles wrote in post #6661756
Wouldnt it be easier/more economical/safer to burn those files to DVD instead of relying on removable harddrives?!? Plus DVD is a very easy way to catalog files since you can simply write date ranges or event names on the disk before putting it away...

1 terabyte worth of pictures takes about 218 DVD-R discs to store. Each job ranges anywhere from 2 to 35GB. I tried DVD and it's absolutely painful to find images on discs, especially when they're scattered across 6 discs for one job. Hard drives gives you good performance and searchability.

JeffreyG wrote in post #6662103
Probably because the more compressed JPEGs are good enough for the clients. The compression that is done on JPEGs doesn't do much damage until you drop down past the top slot or two.

We hobbiests can afford to shoot RAW + JPEG fine and save both forever if we wish. I can imagine people shooting loads of stuff professionally who need to keep the files are content with a touch of compression.

dshankar wrote in post #6662258
I see it the other way around. Hobbyists should be content with compression since they don't print 24x36 pictures. Professionals should save RAW + JPEG fine when they need to quickly display content to a client or quickly edit, versus saving all the data for a future, proper post processing.

yup, most clients are fine with an 8MP compressed jpeg. If I have full control of the lighting and it doesn't change much, then I'll zero in the exposure and white balance and shoot jpeg and have zero editing afterwards. Otherwise, for dynamic events like weddings, I shoot RAW. For anything personal, I shoot jpeg. I've also printed a good number of 24x36 fine with a 8MP out of camera jpeg. looks great!

haydskies wrote in post #6661737
Is this not akin to buying a Ferrari then never driving above 3000rpm's because doing so will increase fuel consumption? Why buy a camera with potential performance if you don't fully utilise it?

Sometimes it depends on the purpose of the pictures.

I usually shoot large fine jpeg, although I switch to RAW in difficult situations (for example, high contrast or low light).

OTOH, sometimes I'm documenting a procedure such as a teardown of an engine or dismantling a motorcycle. For those apps if I'm taking a lot of shots I choose medium normal which gives plenty of detail and saves a bunch of space on the HD. Large, fine would have no advantage at all, particularly since most of these shots will be posted on a web site at 800 X 533.

-js