thek

Ok I just got a kodak cx7300 cheapie $147. Now its got these different picture quality settings. The best is 3.2 mp low compression, the worst is 0.8 mp.

Now I was expecting the 0.8 mp pics to be really poor quality but while viewing the pictures on the computer and television they appeared to be about the same quality as the 3.2 mp ones. Ill be viewing 99% of my pictures this way, so is it a waste of time for me to use the 3.2 mp setting?

So what is the advantage of taking the pictures on the 3.2 mp setting? Is it just that you can do bigger prints, if you were to print them? Or are the pictures on the computer clearer as well? Anything else?

I know what the disadvantage is, and that is having to buy more memory and also uploads taking longer, so if theres no need for me to do it I'd prefer not to.

Any help is great.

Thanks.

 

EB-maen

my understanding is, basically, the images are larger. it's basically so, as you said, you can get higher quality prints at large sizes. it's also handy for editing, as if you have these huge photos you can scale them down if need be, whereas with smaller size photos you dont have as much to play around with. that's just my take on it, so I may not be correct. hope it helped

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Axeman82

Megapixels mean millions of dots per image.

So for example your standard TV is made up of something like 400x400 dots, or 160 000 dots or 0.16 megapixels. So viewing low megapixel images on a TV will still look good.

However a std computer display is 1024x768 dots, and therefore 0.78 megapixels. So viewing these on a computer screen still looks good.

Now taking this to a printed picture is different. A high quality photo prints out at 300 dots per inch, or 90 000 dots per square inch. A 6x4 photo has 24 square inches, and therefore requires 2.16megapixels to cover the picture. A 0.8MP image will be high quality at a 7x7cm print.

That may have got confusing and I might have a few things mixed up but basically the less dots you have in the picture, the less area you can cover in a printed photo, and if you want a bigger photo with a low MP count, the dots are stretched to cover up for the inadequate amount.

If you want to view them only on the TV/PC then you can get away with lower MP settings, however if you want to print any photos out then you need the highest setting. All depends on your needs.

Dan...

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thek

Thanks for the info guys.

So I guess I'll just use the 0.8 mp setting for pics I want to look at on the computer, then go to the 3.2 mp setting when I take pics of things I plan on printing out.

So just to make 100% sure; There is no clarity advantage (while viewing on a computer) to using 3.2 mp?

Thanks.

Axeman82

There is because you can zoom in on the high res pics. So if you want to be able to zoom in then is a HUGE difference.

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mr_mkII

yeah if ya going to use the digital zoom to get the right image you want then ur best off using the higher mp or else it wont come out right.

i find using lower mp to view on my pc isnt as good as using a higher mp, cause the lower mp pics come out a bit fuzzy compare to the higher mp pics.

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ESP

The other advantage of a Higher MP camera/pic is that you can "snag" images from within a photo you have taken and then resize that image for print,email,wallpaper or just to view.

MP isn't the only advantage, each camera processes images differently and each brand differs with lens and software quality. Remember that digital images are processed by the camera and stored on a media card and are not transferred to film like conventional SLR's. This means that there is a huge bias in image quality that is entirely dependent on the electronics instead of just the optics.

Check this site out for side by side comparisons...............it's an eye opener...........literally.

http://www.imaging-resource.com/IMCOMP/COMPS01.HTM


Select your cameras and then compare image quality / colour and contrasts.

ENJOY !!!!!!!!!!!

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XE ESP The last of the CLEVO's
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Devil_Racer

cheers for that link

Unless you're printing larger than normal photos or zooming in alot then that feature won't appeal to you. It's probably good to keep the photos at low mp so that the photos you take will not take up a large amounts of space on you're pc. If you need to to print a large photo then just swich the feature on, good luck

Bayvu

Just to add a little more, photos displayed on the web are usually saved at 72 dpi (dots per inch) whereas when printing a mono laser printer prints at 600 dpi and inkjet colour printers print up around 1200 dpi.

As stated before, the lower resolution pictures display OK on a PC screen but print either very small (2.5 cm x 2.5 cm) or blocky when printed at 6x4 inch(standard photo print).

I always take digital photos at the highest megapixel setting as you never know when you may want to print or play around with the image. As an aside, most cameras save the image as a jpg file which is a compressed format and if you manipulate the image and resave it you will lose quality (by the nature of the compression algorithym used). If you're going to play around with the image, save it first to a tif file or similar, play around with it, then save it as a jpg file when finished.

With the price of memory at the moment, hard drives, flash drives and the availability of CD & DVD burners, I would always take the largest megapixel photo available and then burn them off to CD or DVD for storage.

Hope this helps a bit.

Dave

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thek

I see what you guys are saying. How pissed would you be if you got a fantastic shot, and you wanted to print it, then you realised it was only on 0.8 mp?

So I'm looking into getting a 256mb sd memory card? Cheapest I've seen is $70. Is that a good price?

And is there a quality difference between different sd memory cards? Like should I not buy the cheapest one possible?

Thanks.