How to set my camera for the best quality photos?

Unless you are just taking photos to upload them to a website, you will want to change the settings on your camera to the least compression available.

What’s compression?

Using an empty pop can for an analogy, when you compress it the can gets smaller but the quality of your can is reduced. Likewise, when your camera compresses it’s photos they get smaller and the quality of the photo is reduced.

How do I change the compression?

I would give you step by step directions but the menus and terms on different camera are well….different. So if you are brave start poking around on the menu on your camera. The levels of compression are often called: super fine, fine, normal and basic or none, high, medium and low. From these options choose none or super fine. When you scroll through the different setting you may notice a number off to the side that is getting smaller as you reduce compression. That is the number of photos that you will be able to save on the memory card in your camera.

My camera is a Canon and it uses two settings: the pixel dimension and compression. I chose L (large) 2816×2112 pixels and in the compression menu I chose superfine and then it determined that I could save 259 more photos on my memory card when using these settings. If you aren’t brave about poking around on your camera to look for these settings then I suggest that you pull out the dreaded manual or even better stop by Leave A Legacy in Fort Collins or Denver and we’ll check your settings for you.