Advice/comments needed please

[Spartacus]

Dear Distinguished Members,

I need some of your valuable advice/comments on the following please i.e.

Q1. If I use image-size Large to shoot my photos, would there be any difference in quality, colour etc.
(I am aware image-size Large has more pixels) versus shooting them in image-size Medium?

Q2. Would image-size Large photos affect the computer in any way when downloading onto the computer i.e.
such as slowing down the computer and also taking up more space in the computer?

Not being too smart about computers, my children says image-size Large does affect the computer such as
slowing down the computer during the down-loading thereby affecting the computer's performance when the
large file of photos are stored in the computer.

Thank You in advance.

Cheers,

Stephen

[Clactonian]

Stephen
It is difficult to be specific without knowing more details of your camera and settings, but in a nutshell...
1. In reality yes. You can't beat having more pixels. A small image is simply that, and if you try to view or print large you will be very disappointed in the results. You are very restricted in what you can do with a small image. Most people work on the basis of capturing as much information as possible at the picture taking stage, i.e. a large file or image.
2. Yes, but everything is relative and with today's speedy computers I would not think this is anything to worry about. You will also use more disk space but storage is relatively cheap.

[Stagecoach]

Hi Stepen

Whilst the larger files should not 'slow down' your computer it is worth taking note of the following with regard to your hard drive storage;

a) Capacity
b) Used Space
c) Free Space

The above can be found by looking at the 'properties' of your hard drive.

Cheers, Grahame

[Mike Buckley]

You have already received good advice but the following comment has been overlooked.

my children says image-size Large does affect the computer such as slowing down the computer during the down-loading thereby affecting the computer's performance when the large file of photos are stored in the computer.

To clarify that, your computer's performance will not be affected when using it for non-photographic purposes. As someone already mentioned, computers are so fast today that viewing a "Large" JPEG will not be problematic even if you have a relatively old computer that is not as fast as computers being made today.

The easy thing to do is to take a few photos using the "Large" setting, download them and then view them on your computer. See for yourself whether viewing them is irritatingly slow. You can always delete them after performing your test.

[Spartacus]

Thank you Distinguished members for your valuable advice/comments. I really appreciate it.

I will do as advised. Will try to use image-size Large instead and download it onto the computer
same time will also check out the Hard Drive's Storage on its capacity, used space and free space as advised.

Thank you all once again.

Cheers,

Stephen

[Spartacus]

Hello Mike,

Thanks a million for your valuable advice/comments.

Apologies for not being detailed in providing more info.

My camera is a Nikon D700 and I was using my Nikkor 24 - 70, f/2.8 lens inside the hospital room which had yellow/orangee lights.

As my daughter did not want me to use flash so as not to upet the newborn baby's eyes, I opt to using ISO 6400 instead.

Of course, I did not think much of the yellow/orangee lights in the room because my ISO was set at AUTO so I thought the camera would take care of refining the odd lighting. (I was wrong)!

Being a Newbie, I am still learning through trial and error and through reading photography books purchased from Amazon.com

Thanks once again for your advice/comments. It sure help me alot in horning my skills.

Cheers,

Stephen

[Manfred M]

Stephen

A few additional thoughts for you based on your last post:

1. One should always save the largest files at the highest quality level you can. One can always downgrade quality, but the techniques used to reduce image size and file size throw data away. Once the data has been lost, it can never be recovered. The D700 does not create particularly large files.

In these days of fairly inexpensive storage, it’s generally hard to justify shooting anything other than the best quality your camera can deliver. The only time I will actually downgrade the quality of my capture would be when I am running short on storage space in my camera. This has only happened to me once. I now always carry enough spare memory cards to cover any shooting eventuality.

2. Auto ISO has nothing to do with colour balance. Auto colour balance would have helped, but in strange (mixed) lighting, might be difficult if not impossible to correct. This can be the case when there are different types of light sources that are used at the same time. It’s hard to know what conditions you were shooting under.

You might have some success in correcting the colour balance in post-processing; and even if you had shot in camera RAW, you might not be able to get colours that are acceptable