James Glidewell wrote:
Paul Rubin wrote:
"jeremy" writes:

And then, one day, we realize that the ONLY THINGS left to remind
us of the activities and milestones in our lives are those thin
pieces of paper upon which are printed the photos we took, or the
CDs that contain the image files. And that is when we look back
and wish that we had bought the better camera, with the better
lens, and had made bigger prints, rather than those drug store
discounted ones.


What I've seen in those situations is that a low res print of
Grandma
makes the viewer every bit as happy as a high res one does, as long
as the subject is identifiable.

That's my experience as well. I don't think that the difference
between a two megapixel image and a six megapixel image is going to
make any real difference in the sentimental value of the image.

What _will_ matter is if you have any images at all - please *back*
*up* your photos, folks... preferably with at least one copy
offsite.


Yes, that too.

Here's a little metaphor:
the first photo is the whole thing, shot in about 1938 on 116 film in
a Kodak "Autographic";
next two are crops.

http://www.fototime.com/5E21E09C4043371/orig.jpg
http://www.fototime.com/4E0721419FCB4A2/orig.jpg
http://www.fototime.com/EAD91185898D0A3/orig.jpg

The print from which the scan was made is a contact print, the
original somewhat smaller than the whole-thing as it shows up on my
1024x768 lcd monitor.

Can you imagine getting such nice, independent images from an
Instamatic print? not likely. Because the original was of a nature to
allow maintenance of detail and tone, it was relatively easy to
extract something of sentimental value, and a little more, I think.

As a comparison, here's one from an Instamatic print.
http://www.fototime.com/2C71B7806D3648B/orig.jpg

So it is with digital: always get as much information as you can;
somewhere down the line someone may benefit in ways you couldn't
imagine.

--
Frank ess