Cropping question.

[detter]

I'm in a time of indecision. I’m a retired professional photog shooting solely for personal use. Among others, I currently use a D700 and some fairly nice Nikon lenses. I do NOT work in TIFF or RAW, but rather prefer JPEGS. My 100% file sizes usually run 6 - 7 MB. My quandary arises when I crop. I generally try for optical cropping at the time of actuation but better compositions invariably appear on the computer screen during editing. The resultant on screen cropping yield files in the range of 2.5 - 3 MB or maybe smaller; not really suitable for 8 x 10 prints.
I THINK ??? I would be happier with a D800 cropped file size of 10 - 12MB. YES ??? NO??? Also, with the same size image, would I notice appreciable noise from the smaller pixel size used with the new D800 sensor?

 

[MReid]

Yes the 36mp give you much more lee way for cropping.
The D800 is not optimized for shooting jpegs...they are geared for shooting Raw. I have read this in several places.
Noise should be a wash.

 

[480sparky]

Sounds like you're cropping far too much in post. You may need to invest in longer glass.

 

[tirediron]

Remember too that .jpg is a 'lossy' format. Each time you open it, edit the file and then save it, some data is lost. Doing several edits on the same .jpg can result in a significant loss of quality not incurred when shooting in .nef.

 

[KmH]

I'm in a time of indecision. I’m a retired professional photog shooting solely for personal use. Among others, I currently use a D700 and some fairly nice Nikon lenses. I do NOT work in TIFF or RAW, but rather prefer JPEGS. My 100% file sizes usually run 6 - 7 MB. My quandary arises when I crop. I generally try for optical cropping at the time of actuation but better compositions invariably appear on the computer screen during editing. The resultant on screen cropping yield files in the range of 2.5 - 3 MB or maybe smaller; not really suitable for 8 x 10 prints.
I THINK ??? I would be happier with a D800 cropped file size of 10 - 12MB. YES ??? NO??? Also, with the same size image, would I notice appreciable noise from the smaller pixel size used with the new D800 sensor?

For printing, the file size (MB) doesn't matter as much as the pixel dimensions (megapixels, MP) that remain after cropping. Just be sure to save the cropped JPEG file at the highest quality setting available.

If you're concerned about print quality I can't imagine why you would shoot JPEG, and let the camera do it's crude and global edits to the photo the image sensor captured.

At any rate, for a quality 8x10 you would need somewhere between 150 pixles per inch (ppi) to 300 ppi.

Some basic math shows that to print an 8x10 at 150 ppi you would need pixel dimensions of 1200 x 1500 pixels, which is 1.8 MP, and double that, 2400 x 3000 pixels (7.2 MP) to print at 300 ppi.