Step one is to delete the failures it's way too easy to save bad shots you'll never print..

Remember, your hard drive will crash the only question is when..

So, get in the habit of transferring photos to DVD, and perhaps to an extrnal hard drive. Once you have them stored on DVD, you can clear off your main hard drive..

I also have a lot of shots on a smal extrnal hard drive In Canada Costco was selling a 160GB drive for about $160. Between DVDs and this drive, files are safe, and not on the main computer..

BAK..

These are very cheap and portable.I have several: A larger main archive, and a Western Digital 160 gig passport.Its about the size of several match-books.Unless you are specifically shooting for the Web, shoot in Maximum Resolution..

You would hate yourself if you captured a killer moment, and were using some limited file sizep.s. You can check out the Storage & Media forum here at DPreviewWarm regards,DOF..

Get an external drive or two. 500gb were down to 111 euros last week.Don't wait for the Nikon D-whatever, have fun now!http://www.flickr.com/photos/j_wijnands/..

I concur with the advice to get an external hard drive..

Also (and this will be sacrilege to many here), if you're shooting in JPG-Fine, try JPG-Normal instead. The files will be appreciably smaller, and you'll be hard pressed to tell the difference...

I like this kind of sacrilege. It's true as well.Don't wait for the Nikon D-whatever, have fun now!http://www.flickr.com/photos/j_wijnands/..

Tatanka wrote:.

If you're shooting in JPG-Fine, try JPG-Normal instead. The files willbe appreciably smaller, and you'll be hard pressed to tell the difference..

Hard-pressed? You're being too kind. It's more like "nearly impossible"..

I've done a number of tests on my Rebel XT, and there simply is no visible difference between Normal and Fine. Sure there's a mathematical difference, but the difference is so tiny that it's invisible..

Some people think of digital photography as capturing data rather than capturing pictures, and they would care about the mathematical difference even if it's invisible. But those people should be shooting Raw instead of JPEG anyway because there's much more data lost by the conversion to 8-bit RGB than by the JPEG/Normal compression..

In my opinion, the JPEG/Fine setting is mainly for use in the Basic Zone modes where Raw isn't available...

Use a non-destructive editor such as Lightroom; that is, use an editor that makes changes as removable instructions and does not re-write the JPG files each time the changes to the JPG are saved..

Such editors only only write a new file when you export a JPG or TIF that reflects the changes. You can always delete that exported file after printing/emailing and re-export it again later if needed..

You will maintain the image quality and size of the original JPG but the instructions for changes (e.g. increase exposure by 10%) are very tiny by comparison and are re-applied upon each view/export of the *original* JPG each time you open/edit/resave the changes..

I don't want to offend, but you seem surprised that files from a 8 megapixel camera were going to be significantly larger than those from a 5 megapixel camera. This should have been a consideration in your planning and budgeting of the purchase (i.e. extra storage requirements)..

Tjdowning wrote:.

Just got my Canon EOS rebel xti and see that the file size after Itransfer to my computer is way larger than my other pics from my 5mpKodak.Probably a dumb question, but I want to keep the photo quality butdon't want to use up what's left of my 80gb hard drive.Any advise is appreciated.-TerriIowa.

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