I frequently hear the argument that one should always shoot at a camera's maximum capability (Large/Fine/Raw). However, if I don't print my photos, and my laptop has a resolution of 1366 x 768, then do I lose any information at all by shooting in Medium/Fine?
Do you 'loose' information shooting at lower settings?
NO... how can you 'loose' something you never had? You have simply not captured as much as you could have. Symantics of wordage; but subtle change of terminology, makes big difference to how we perceive things. If you had a 10Mpix D50, and that was all it gave at 'best' settings, would you consider yourself to be 'loosing' pixels not having a different camera that could do better?
The 'Loss' happens when you come to view, and your computer looks at 10x10 blocks of pixels and averages them out to a single screen dot.....
Means shooting at lower res settings you are actually loosing 'less' data, when it comes to it.....
But... depends on what happens between capture and display; having more 'catptured' data; means you can choose what you might want to keep or chuck away before computer does, re-sizing for display. So you have more opportunity to edit; whether you crop or filter or whatever.
That's the 'advantage' of having higher 'capture' resolution.
Disadvantages is that bigger files take up more car space and disc-space; they take more processing to write to file, open and change.
If you are shooting sequences; lower settings are likely to let you shoot faster before hitting buffer stops; and in editing; you are likely to be rewarded by spending less time watching the egg-timer making changes; or waiting for images to open and display.
So, don't think of it as a 'loss'... think of it as 'Work' how much do you need to do to get the job done? Do you really need the 'extra' work of capturing more data, if you don't need it, to give the camera extra work to record it all; and computer more work to save it and move it and display it?
If its 'redundant' data that you don't really want or need, then it is actually more of a 'Saving', isn't it?
But; does beg the question; why buy an expensive camera with large MPix resolution.... if you aren't going to use it? Which brings us to analogies to people that buy 170mph motorbikes, or exotic sportscars, or high performance exectutive saloons, when we have a 70mph speed limit; or who buy, a 4x4 that is likely never to tackle any ground more uneven than an inconveniently placed kerb-stone or sleeping policeman!
