William Sommerwerck wrote:

Shooting everything at maximum resolution would quickly fill up one's card.

That was probably the case a few years ago- but today - with the price
of cards so low - there isn't near the "cost" for shooting hi-res /low
compression there used to be. Of course it makes sense to understand the
tradeoffs - and choose the right resolution / compression for both the
subject and the target media. But since I don't always know that in
advance - I tend to keep my camera at 2048 X 1536 and compression at
minimum (though I can set it to none, I can't tell the difference). At
that setting - I can get 624 pictures on a 1Gb card. Of course at 640 X
480 with max compression I can get 10406 pictures on that same card -
but what on earth would you ever take that many pictures of? With 4Gb
and larger becoming more and more common - it gets hard to justify low
res and /or high compression.

Image quality varies among cameras. It seems that DSLRs have better sensors
and processing. The image posted here would have been of very poor quality
had it been at 1/10 the posted resolution (250K versus 2.5M). Note the
severe compression artifacts on at least one of the radio's grilles.

I'm not sure there isn't something else going on with that photo... it's
pretty distressed. Some processing software (particularly some of the
"freebie" kind) - can have less than good results.

Like all such things... just my .02
--
randy guttery

A Tender Tale - a page dedicated to those Ships and Crews
so vital to the United States Silent Service:
http://tendertale.com