I don’t know if it’s been mentioned before but is there a rule about image size?
I run all my images through Photoshop Elements then store them on Photobucket. I resize them making them 72d.p.i… less than 100k filesize and 800 or less pixels wide, it’s easy enough to do and one nice side effect is that after 10 years of photography my Photobucket account is still only 8% full.
The main reason that I started doing this is to save bandwidth for the website that I’m posting on and download time for those of us who have had a less than perfect download speed.
It also means that threads don’t run off the edge of the “page”.
There are many free software packages that will do resizing quickly and efficiently, GIMP, Irfanview etc.
I don’t think there is a rule about image size but I think it’s best to consider people using devices with small screens and those with limited bandwidth.
The review template makes images 400 px wide. Picasa resizes max 800 px wide which seems enough for forums.
I use Irfanview and Paint.NET to resize static images. I try to get them as small as possible while still maintaining decent image quality. It's even possible to shrink some animated GIFs with GIMP.
My Photobucket account is "6% full", but I use up most of my monthly bandwidth, and I hate Photobucket.
All of the new images that I post on BLF are hosted on abload.de. The site is in German, but they provide free unlimited bandwidth. I think abload is much better than Photobucket.
I would like it if more BLF members would shrink their images so that the site loads more quickly.
Although large animated GIFs will always eat a lot of bandwidth, I believe that the vast majority of large static images posted on the web do not need to be more than about 200 kilobytes. 8)
So do I, Elements has a neat feature called “Save for web” It opens a new window with a split screen that allows you to compare the difference - before/after “Optimize for” however many k you choose, I’ve got it set to 100k and you’d be hard pushed to see the difference from 1-2 Mb down to 100k even on HDR shots that started off as 5 RAW images.
I’ve never used up my monthly bandwidth on Photobucket but I’m always looking out for other free hosts, I’ve got space and bandwidth from my ISP but it’s years since I’ve used it.
I’ll give abload.de a try. ~I can’t speak German but I’ll work out how to use it.!
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That went well!! Joined, started Album, uploaded some knife pics and posted in under 10 mins.
I would like to get some feedback on my SWM C10R review.
I kept it really crisp and clear, I`m not much of an entertainer, nor a sales person.
But I wanted to share the things that people are usally interested in, with some good and clear photography.
I also reduced the size of most of the pictures, so it doesn`t take ages to load, and keeps the overview very simple.
Clicking on those smaller pictures will link them to a bigger version of that picture.
I actually really like how it looks like.. Easy to navigate, and easy to find the information you want to know.
But that`s from my view..
what do you guys think? Would like to hear some opinions.
What do you guys think about those small pictures?
Most of the pictures in the review are reduced to 240pixels wide, and put together, as they usually are a part of a series. So they might seem to be 4 pictures in 1, but are 4separate ones, you can click on any of them to see the larger picture.
Yes, the smaller pics for the beamshots are just for reference, to see which one is which light.
An Yes I agree that they need to be large to see the difference.
For the smaller pics, I thought not everybody would be interested in them, so I kept them small. And if someone want to see a bigger version, simply click on the pic.
My latest way of doing the runtime test, and at the same time Lux ceiling bounce output test.
I used to sit in my little hobbyroom, using a digital kitchen timer set to 5 minutes, and every 5 minutes write the numbers down from my Lux meter. In the end, I put it all in an excel file, and make a graph for run-time/output.
But that was very time consuming.. sometimes I had to sit there for 2-3 hours, and writing down the lux numbers every 5 minutes.
but now I have a much better way of doing it, and it`s very cheap.
Thanks for sharing Chibi. You may be able to save some time if you have software that does OCR. You could batch edit your images with a program like XnView to crop the image so that it only shows the lux meter screen. Let's say that each cropped file results in an OCR'd text file. You could have those files concatenated into a single new file, and even import them into a table.
I use XnView for batch cropping and other batch adjustments, then Acrobat for OCR. I don't remember if Acrobat can do a batch conversion. Since I was scanning books, I would add all the pages and then OCR. There may be better and less expensive options for OCR.
A brief opening note about the “Real World Reviews”
At this point many fellow “flashaholics” have developed very sophisticated and detailed methods for measuring nearly every conceivable technical aspect of the illumination products on the market. The “Real World Reviews” acknowledge the existence of the detailed technical reviews (and I’ll link to them below if I can) but will not re-hash all of that tech data. Instead the focus of the “Real World Reviews” is to take that “laboratory” information out into real world conditions to give the reader an idea of how the numbers translate into actual use.
