File size

[Bazil]

I've given this a run in Camera Specific but as yet no replies and I think I'm going Bonkers! Have now about 50 shots with Kodak V550 with unchanged camera settings (5mp) and the downloaded file sizes vary from 700kb to over 2 meg. My previous camera didn't do this and a mate has just sent me 10 of his photos from a Fuji and the whole ten are !meg plus or minus about 100kb. The size of the file seems dependany upon the detail in the pic, eg, trees and shrubs, big file. Lots of blue sky, small file. All 50 pics look fine. I need help to understand this.
Bazil
Australia

[ktixx]

DO this - Take 20 pictures of the exact same thing at the exact same time, same lighting, same conditions, same everything. If your file sizes are drastically different then you can assume something is wrong with your camera, if not then you can just attribute the varying file sizes to the changing conditions of your photographs. The more detail and color in a photo the larger the file size will be. Try out this experiment and post your results
Hope this helps
Ken

[Bill Markwick]

I've given this a run in Camera Specific but as yet no replies and I think I'm going Bonkers! Have now about 50 shots with Kodak V550 with unchanged camera settings (5mp) and the downloaded file sizes vary from 700kb to over 2 meg. My previous camera didn't do this and a mate has just sent me 10 of his photos from a Fuji and the whole ten are !meg plus or minus about 100kb. The size of the file seems dependany upon the detail in the pic, eg, trees and shrubs, big file. Lots of blue sky, small file. All 50 pics look fine. I need help to understand this.
Bazil
Australia

The spread you're getting is typical of what I get with my Panasonic FZ20. The JPEG compression looks for repeated pixels, so detail results in a big file and repetition (eg, blue sky) results in a small file. The file size varies with the quality setting - for instance, with maximum quality, my 5MP images compress to (typically) 2.5MB, plus or minus a whole bunch depending on the subject.

The other cameras probably use different quality settings. It doesn't sound like a problem.

Regards,
Bill

[D Thompson]

I've given this a run in Camera Specific but as yet no replies and I think I'm going Bonkers! Have now about 50 shots with Kodak V550 with unchanged camera settings (5mp) and the downloaded file sizes vary from 700kb to over 2 meg. My previous camera didn't do this and a mate has just sent me 10 of his photos from a Fuji and the whole ten are !meg plus or minus about 100kb. The size of the file seems dependany upon the detail in the pic, eg, trees and shrubs, big file. Lots of blue sky, small file. All 50 pics look fine. I need help to understand this.
Bazil
Australia
Bazil - I think you do understand it. More detail = more data = bigger file size. I only shoot RAW and looking at some of the folders the size ranges from 6.8mb to 10.4mb depending on how much is in the shot. Not sure why one camera does and one doesn't.

[Bazil]

Just been out on my front balcony and did as Ken suggested, cheated a bit, took 10 facing due north then 10 facing northeast. First 10 = 1.1-1.2 meg, second 10, 1.2-1.3 meg. THEN, came inside, shot red painted wall = 692kb, next a white door = 631kb. I guess it's the compression alright but the question remains..why didn't my Ricoh G4 wide do this too?? less sophisticated software ?
I've just ran through my Ricoh shots for a look and I can tell on what megapixel setting they were taken simply by the file size as there are only 3 basic file sizes in the whole Ricoh folder.
I'm still a bit puzzled but I've stopped worrying. Help much appreciated

Bazil
(Barry)