Digital Camera - Q & A

Thats 15 mega pixels not 15 Megabytes. I never record at a lower quality, sometimes at a lower resolution like 8 and most of the time in RAW.

You have your answer right in front of you.

You bought the T1i and part of the reason was the high pixel count on the sensor if you are like most people, so why would you want to neuter it by using a lower resolution

ALWAYS, shoot at your cameras highest resolution.

I would shoot at the higher quality and invest in one or two bigger memory cards. The Canon T1i uses SD or SDHC cards (both are same, SDHC is a newer version of the SD).

There are a number of good brands for memory cards, I favor Sandisk brand and prefer Sandisk's higher quality "Ultra" and "Extreme" card, the Ultra costing a little less.

Here are some estimated prices:
4GB - $10 to $12
8GB - $20 to $30
16GB - $40 to $50

Below I listed some good photo sellers to help check your options. You really need more storage. As you fill up cards, you should back up your image files (to hard drive, DVDs, flash drives). Then you can keep reusing the cards.

Hope this helps.

Mark

If you're not a pro and are not concerned with picture size, shoot at 3.7MP to gain lots of memory card space. Picture quality as you know it will still be the same. The only advantage of shooting at the higher MP values is if you are going to manipulate and print the picture to huge billboard sizes.