Have you tried to enlarge an image from your camera only to have it go all grainy and pixelated? Or sent someone an email with your image attached, only to find out it’s so big they have to scroll around the screen to see it? Bet you have wondered why.

It all has to do with the file size and quality you have your camera set to. In the days of film camera it was never an issue. Film was pretty much the same size for everyone. Digital cameras of today are full of options and default settings.

Every camera has some choice settings for your file size, but each camera maker has a different name for them. It can be confusing, but essentially you have two options that you can change.

You will have an option for image quality. Often you will see an icon representation of the quality. At one end the icon is smooth, and at the other it’s jagged. This relates to the compression level of the image file (usually jpg) with the icon representing what is happening to your file. High quality creates a larger file with fine detail that takes up more space; low quality is a rougher image but saves space.

Then there is image size. Often this is represented by pixel dimensions, so the bigger the dimensions, the larger the image. Obviously, the larger the size, the bigger the image can be enlarged without falling apart. But it will also take up more space on your memory card. You may have noticed that with the small setting you can get 600 or more images, but with the large setting it’s suddenly 20 images to fill your card.

The rule of thumb is to always make your images as large as possible with the best quality. You can shrink the image down with software but you cannot make it larger without pixelation and loss of quality. Remember, though, when you email the image to friends or post it on a social page to shrink it down first. Usually 600 pixels longest side is great. When you send your file to an image site for printing, send the biggest version, even if you are not printing it very large, and it will look better. There will be more detail and better color. Always save your file in a safe place, back it up, and only work on copies of your original file.

I am a long time Star Trek fan, not quite a trekker but do enjoy my sci-fi. So to join Mason Dodds in the photography of Leonard Nemoy’s Vulcan, Alberta visit this April is exciting. Most of the event we will be jostling shoulders with a crowd of accredited photographers, I am sure. However, only Mason and I will be in the hour and half High Tea event with 50 ticket holders.

Did you know Leonard has been doing photography for about 40 years? He studied photography at UCLA in the ’70s. Somewhere along that timeline it became a profession with the nude as the focus. He has books and limited edition prints, all very interesting images.

He remains very active in the nude photography fine art field. It fascinated me that his nude work is in an impressive number of museum collections, including The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, The Judah L. Magnes Museum, The LA County Museum of Art, the Jewish Museum of NY, The New Orleans Museum of Fine Art and The Hammer Museum.

This summer to fall (2010) his most current photographic collections will be presented at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art in conjunction with R.Michelson Galleries. It opens July 31, 2010.

So for me, I am more fascinated that this photographic artist is who we will be photographing in April, than I am that it’s Mr. Spock in virtually his hometown.

You can visit his website of work at Leonardnimoyphotography.com. It is really worth the visit.

Any lens that is a standard (55mm) lens or wider is considered a wide-angle lens. Their characteristics are greater depth of field and they magnify distances between objects, but they are also prone to lens flare and often have poorer quality on the edges of the image.

A wide-angle lens is great for large groups, landscapes, tight spaces, and to add drama to an image. In its normal use it’s very important to keep the lens perpendicular to the subject and parallel to the ground. Slight deviations from this rapidly create distortion. It’s that distortion that we’re going take advantage off.

Here are 6 things you can do with a wide-angle lens for more creative impact:

1.    Get down low, close to your subject and tilt the camera up. This makes them look taller, stretching the legs out. The closer you get, the more altered the image becomes. Have your subject look off to the side. If your subject is raised to begin with it increases the drama of this “superhero” pose. Pick backgrounds that add to the drama.
2.    You can also squash someone or something. This time go high and tilt down. Your subject now gets shorter. In getting shorter they also get thicker (that body stuff has to go somewhere). Makes for a fun gag shot.
3.    Do something between those two extremes and you can make a person’s torso longer or shorter; same with legs.
4.    On a puffy or stormy cloudy day tilt your lens to the sky. Barely clear the horizon. The wider the lens, the more dramatic the effect.
5.    Get up high, have your subject standing and looking up. You get the normal head but cartoon small body.
6.    With animals or children, get in very close. Very comical distortion, especially with dogs. Clean background works best.