Which digital?

[Paul H]

All good information.
The amount of detail recorded is affected by the number of pixels on the cameras ccd, the more pixels then the more information passing through the lens will be recorded and each resulting pixel in the image will be smaller. This allows for sharper, clearer enlarged pictures.

Some manufacturers including fuji use hexagonal or other more circular shaped ccd receptors to help disguise each pixel.

The sharpness of the image is down to the quality of lens used, both glass quality and size of lens are factors. Generally speaking the bigger the lens the more light it can gather the better the image. This is another reason most SLR's are better than compacts.

The colour rendition, i.e the depth and saturation etc..., is down to the cameras software and the quality of the ccd again.

For internet images which will be viewed on screen and not printed out then an image size of 640 by 480 at 72dpi would appear fine. This was why the first digital cameras operated at this resolution. However an image shot at a much higher resolution then adjusted down to this smaller size will appear better quality due to more information having been recorded in the first place.

I too have a fuji 303 at 3mp and am more than happy with the results. I do tho use a Canon EOS 3 for more creative work.

 

[Big Rik]

I've got the Olympus C-5060 Wide Zoom, apart from the G6, it's the only camera with a flip over screen, so you can see yourself for self takes.
Essential for those with no mates ! ! !

 

[Terry Comerford]

Both the quality of the picture and the picture sharpness, are down to the quality of the photographer. ;-)

 

[Frothey]

more than happy with the Olympus C5050 - chips are now cheap enough to take everything full format (RAW/TIFF) and compress down if needed.
why buy a high MegaPixel camera and not use it?

 

[Terry Comerford]

I've still got my C5050, it's a great little camera, that will do most things if you use your feet.
I bought a wide angle, screw on lens from Raynox, the pics have been used in mags.

 

[Paul H]

Yes I forgot that one Terry!
Knowing how to use your camera is essential.

I used to work in a camera shop and 90% of customers compaints about printed picture quality or camera faults were down to them not knowing how to use it properly.

Try telling them that tho :0)

 

[Paul H]

Ahem.... Complaints.

 

[GrahamM]

Glad to see you've come round to digital at last Terry........

 

[Big Rik]

I remember that thread Graham......

 

[Cakey]

Wol really started something with with 5060's

 

[Bully]

What is parallax.........apart from a description of WoL on most night fishing trips??

Also, another good reason for high meg density is printing. Unless I am mistaken it is infinitely better when having 3+ meg.

 

[Warren 'Hatrick' (Wol) Gaunt]

Stretch your arm forward and extend your thumb, so that your thumbnail faces your eyes. Close one eye (A') and move your thumb so that, looking with your open eye (B'), you see your thumbnail covering the landmark A. Then open the eye you had closed (A') and close the one (B') with which you looked before, without moving your thumb. It will now appear that your thumbnail has moved: it is no longer in front of landmark A, but in front of some other point at the same distance.
Estimate the true distance AB, by comparing it to the estimated heights of trees, widths of buildings, distances between power-line poles, lengths of cars etc. The distance to the landmark is 10 times the distance AB.
Why does this work? Because even though people vary in size, even a Dullard like you, the proportions of the average human body are fairly constant, and for most people, the angle between the lines from the eyes (A',B') to the outstretched thumb is about 6?, close enough to the value 5.73? for which the ratio 1:10. That angle is the parallax of your thumb, viewed from your eyes. The triangle A'B'C has the same proportions as the much larger triangle ABC, and therefore, if the distance B'C to the thumb is 10 times the distance A'B' between the eyes, the distance AC to the far landmark is also 10 times the distance AB.

 

[Cakey]

Bully what Wol is trying to say that on close up pictures taken on a camera with a view finder that does not look through the main lens but looks through its own window its possible to cut peoples heads off etc .
a lot of cameras have a set of lines in the view finder that you use in close up mode

 

[Bully]

Cheers - I think I'll stick with my WoL definition though !! Whats he like when he describes his tactics etc? I can just see it now.......

My hand approached the rod at an angle of 45 degrees, from a north westerly direction. Placing my right hand 95 centimetres up the butt, and left hand 5 centimetres from the reel seat, I lifted my rod at a velocity of approximately 2 metres per second until it reached a position of 45 degrees angle and 3.2 metres from the lilac bush behind me (which incidentally had 23 flowering buds, 34% of which had bees on them). Casting my rig at a velocity of 30 metres per second into a south westerly wind of 23mph it landed at a distance of 54.4 metres???.

 

[Wag]

Woody, for pictures posted on the web anything above 1.5 MP is wasted, as most people have the screen resolution set somewhere between 800x600 (480,000 pixels) and 1280x1024 (1,310,720 pixels or 1.3 MegaPixels), and even on a high resolution monitor the picture will never be any clearer than the screen resolution can display. The thing you will be able to do is zoom in on, or blow up areas of the picture, but again only up to the maximum of the screen res. Given that file sizes become an issue on websites, there is little point publishing anything much over 800x600 on a website, better to put a low res. thumbnail on, with a link to a higher res. file which can be downloaded if required.

(Sorry if that all sounded a bit technical, but I'm an IT engineer, and bandwidth costs money, so saving as much as possible is part of my job)

For printing and enlargements though you need as much resolution as possible, so the more MPs the better (given a few technical constraints). At high resolutions the lens performance becomes more critical, which is why the top end Nikon/Canon type stuff costs more - the lenses tend to be much better.

 

[Cakey]

Just of to collect the Canon ......back soon

 

[Terry Comerford]

There are around 14 million "quality" pixels in a high-quality 35mm film transparency. That's a shot with a tripod, with a decent lens and a quality, fine-grained film, in decent light.

On of the best digital camera's at the moment, is the pro-spec Canon 1Ds MK11, which generates 16 million pixels per shot, and also captures full frame images, most digital cameras do not.

The Canon 1DS MK 11 is ????5,000
That?s for the body only, without a lens!

A Canon 350D at 8 million pixels per shot has far less quality per shot, than film.

 

[Terry Comerford]

But don't worry Cakey.
They are the best 8MP digi's on the market!
Although the 300D is the better bargain.
Unless you need 8MP.

 

[Cakey]

cant stop playing with it...................camera is good too

 

[Paul H]

yuck.