I am new to PhotographyBLOG and after viewing the photo galleries for a few days now and posting a few photos I have a question.

I believe it would be very beneficial in enabling more meaningful critique of the photos if the image size were to be increased. A maximum of 800 pixels makes such a big difference when trying to judge image quality, particularly focus sharpness.

As there is a Mb limit for each user it would not effect the amount of server space used, although I guess it would use a little more bandwidth. Although with web optimised images the difference is negligable between 600 x 450 and 800 x 600.

I have viewd other similar sites recently and the image sizes are larger than here. It seems to encourage more participation in the critique and discussion of the photos, serious and meaningful critique is a little dificult with the small images in these galleries, and this is after all a photography site.

That said this is my favourite photography site on the web. I would love to see the galleries become more popular. there are many images but few who give much comment. This is a shame and I'm fairly sure the dificulty of judging the small images plays a part in this reluctance to comment.

Can this be changed to allow say 800 x 600 pixel images?

Tend to agree with you Paul although alongside that maybe a restriction on file size to 200k. As one of the poor sods with still a dial up connection some of the current images of 300K+ take an age. Purely selfish reason i know but worth considering i think.

Good point Jogi, there's no way 600 x 450 image should need to be 300kb.
For 800 x600 200kb is more than adequate if it is optimised.

Something else I was just thinking about. If server space is an issue what about linking to images on an image hosting site?
All the photography sites seem to have the images uploaded to their own servers so maybe there is a good reason for this, but I was just wondering.