LARGE/FINE or MEDIUM/FINE?

I've been hired to shoot a wedding shower at a HOTEL in HOLLYWOOD for 100+ people. Yes, I said "wedding shower." I gasped myself.

I'll only be shooting the first three hours and I told them I would only shoot candids and the occasional request from the future bride and groom.

Anyhow, I don't want to shoot RAW for this and I only get 300 shots average at LARGE/FINE. Can I shoot at MEDIUM/FINE? Or will I regret it? I seriously doubt anyone will print 11x17 from this event. Is MEDIUM/FINE good enough res for 8x10?

If I showed up with my CANON FT QL, you think they would mind? :D :D :D

The gig is in September.

You may have been joking about film, but do whichever you're more comfortable unless they specifically want film or digital. Of course film has costs with it but digital has time (time = money :) ).

Even if the If you're shooting digital, just pick up another memory card. Shoot at large/fine so you won't have to worry about it - but 300 is a lot of shots! Cards are surprisingly cheap these days. I have a couple of trips coming up and think I'll pick up a 2G at newegg for about $60. It's the slow Sandisk but my DSLR is a few years old and won't see any benefit from the latest/greatest 133x cards. Even if you want a fast card, you might be surprised at the prices if you haven't looked at them in awhile.

I can see why you wouldn't want to shoot RAW for this, and you really shouldn't need to. I don't know if I'd recommend a custom white balance or not - that depends on many factors; mostly whether or not the light will be changing from shot to shot. Even if the light in the room doesn't change, if you have window light on the edges of the room and incandescent in the middle then you can have a big color temperature difference from shot to shot. Again, do what you're comfortable with. Custom WB can be great for making sure your jpegs come out right, but it is one more thing to deal with - if Auto WB works well for you then use it by all means and make your life easier.

I'm with Steve on this one. I just picked up two- 2gb cards at newegg.com for less than $100 total w/ shipping. I paid more than that for the last 1gb Sandisk I bought last year.

But if your intent on using what you have and want to save room with your file size, set it to the largest resolution, with the "normal" or "medium" jpeg compression setting. This should allow you to get more shots on the CF card without much sacrifice in image quality. The same question was asked in the August issue of Popular Photographer and this is that advice that the "experts" gave.

Change compression first, resolution second. You'll get better quality out of a large/medium file than out of a medium/fine file, if all other factors are the same. If you underexpose too much you may find the whole thing to be a wash.,

Thanks for all the info. I haven't done anything with medium compression since I first got my first digital PS (Canon G2 4MP). I freaked out at the quality and never tried again.

I'll shoot around with large/medium and see how much more shots I get and print some samples. I recently bought another 1gb cf on Ebay but I anticipate using that for my second camera (30D for zoom and DREBEL for wide angles). I have smaller CF cards that are too slow for real use.

AV, thanks for reminding me about the AWB. Unfortunately, I'll be shooting indoors and out so I may have to do AWB. I'd hate to forget and switch over and screw everything up.

Thanks again everyone.

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Originally Posted by manacsa

I'd hate to forget and switch over and screw everything up.

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Everyone might not agree with me here, but I'd say that the potential for this happening is reason enough for not using it. You'll be thinking about a lot of things other than WB, and the small improvement from a custom WB isn't worth it.