5 Mega Pixel Camera

[iKwak]

How can you take full advantage of a 5 mega pixel camera?
And what is the largest size photo you can print without losing any quality?

 

[buck52]

"How can you take full advantage of a 5 mega pixel camera?"


Shoot with it set on it's highest quality setting, either fine JPG or an uncompressed format if available

"And what is the largest size photo you can print without losing any quality?"

Everyones idea of when you start to lose quality is different
The subject matter and how the picture is viewed can make a difference and of course the printer and paper

all that being said most 5M cameras will produce terrific 11x14 prints with ease and are capable of larger when starting with a RAW file and using a good workflow to process the file

Here's one of many sites with tons of good reading with reviews and forums

http://www.dpreview.com/

buck

 

[iKwak]

Ooh, thanks for that link.

 

[slipe]

If you have an optical viewfinder it shows only 80-85% of the scene according to model. So unless you frame with the LCD or get really good at having stuff you want in the picture outside the viewfinder you are down to almost 4Mp from the getgo. You don’t have that problem with an electronic viewfinder. Even with an electronic finder I have to work hard to get images framed tightly enough they don’t look better with a little cropping.

I have printed 13 X 19 prints from a 5Mp image that are quite nice. As Buck pointed out the subject matter becomes important when you can only generate 135 PPI, which is the best you can do with no cropping. It also takes some work in an image editor. The file format quality is important also. Raw is best of course followed by a true SHQ JPG. A true SHQ 5Mp image will generate a JPG of about 3.5Mb and is just about indistinguishable from TIFF. TIFF is totally impractical in most cameras because the wait time between shots is glacial – and the quality isn’t quite as good as raw. Normal best JPG gives about a 2.2Mb file for 5Mp. Much below that and the artifacts really become apparent.

 

[TheGardener]

How can you take full advantage of a 5 mega pixel camera?
And what is the largest size photo you can print without losing any quality?

you get an epson 2200 printer and you can produce up to 12x18" printwork.

i shoot with a Minolta Dimage 7Hi, its 5Mpix (2650 x 1920) and 12 bit and every bit as much of a true SLR that you can get and spend under $1k AND it weighs in at just over a Lb fully loaded, under 2Lb with the ring flash! so i can easily carry it (and a small bag for batteries, memory, lenze filters, cleaning cloth...ect) around an all day event and shoot 2-300 images with 0 fatigue.

i use MonacoSystems easy color to produce profiles for my equipment and using ilford & epson paper (& epson's ink) i create museum quality product.

you can go with the EPSON 84C printer or maybe one of the newer models utilising there new pigmented ink formulas that the 2200 7 color takes but there's no comparison to the output of the 2200 and the cost to print 4x6" is comparable to outsourcing them to a lab.

www.inkjetart.com <nice forum and info there too>

ill work on more info for newbies to the digital production field that ill put up on my domain and as a side note althou i do use adobe photoshop for manipulation of images i use midnightblue.com 's SuperJPG to print from as it does a better job of centering and adjusting the image/printer output, worth every penny of the under $20 bucks for it!

 

[slipe]

12 inch stock is a little hard to come by. The 2200 will take 13 inch stock and print to a width of 40 inches.

The new Canon 9900 has the best quality currently on the market for a wide carriage inkjet, but the inks are dye based and will fade on display. If I were selling prints I would probably get a 2200, but the 9900 is probably a better consumer printer. It is at least 5 times as fast printing at photo quality and the images are spectacular.

I’ve been reluctant to give up my Canon S9000 because you can jerry-rig it to print large panoramas at photo quality. They are big printers and it would be cramped with the S9000 just for panoramas and a 9900 for other stuff. The S9000 is about equal to the Epson 2200 in print quality but doesn’t do large prints borderless like the 2200 or newer Canons.

I have a D7i and get decent 13 X 19 prints from a 16 bit raw file with Photoshop in Adobe RGB. But the biggest 13 X 19 crop I can get is 135 PPI, which isn’t the best the printer can do. I get improvements at least to 180 PPI. I lust for both the stabilization and 8Mp of the A2 but will wait for the new Minolta DSLR with built in stabilization.

 

[iKwak]

I visited both Wal-Mart and Costco to get my prints and one of the staff told me that there is a certain limit for a 4x6 print. If the res of the image is too high, the outer portion of the picture will be chopped off to be able to fit into a 4x6 print. Since I take most of pics at 5mp setting, could someone explain how it will come out on a 4x6 print? Thanks.

 

[TheGardener]

i use 13x19" illford smooth pearl with ~1/2" border rendering the prints to ~12x18". ofcourse i have to crop the height a little to get them just right.

as far as the 4x6" lab prints, its the same as printing on a borderless paper which isnt really that but it is trimmed after the printing is done wareas the lab overhangs the image on there paper so as to produce it borderless. the trick for you would be to frame a little more image in the view prior to capturing as to compinsate for there methods or to enlarge the canvas size in an image editor (reducing the actual image on the 'square' by creating a 'blank' white border).

 

[slipe]

Someone posted that Wal-Mart will give you 4.5 X 6 prints. That will crop a lot less off the top and bottom. Won’t fit in some photo albums though.

You might try cropping yourself before taking the photos to the printer. With most cameras you can delete everything from the card and write the cropped images back to the card for processing. CDRs are almost free if you watch the sales

This is a nice little free utility for cropping: http://graphicssoft.about.com/gi/dy...ssoft&zu=http://ekot.dk/programmer/JPEGCrops/ If you crop them yourself there aren’t any surprises. A lot of pictures look better if you crop them anyway. You have a lot of versatility with a 5Mp camera printing 4 X 6. You can do some pretty heavy cropping and still get a nice print.

 

[TheGardener]

here's some math. most printers discard anything over 300dpi, (the 2200 epson handles 340dpi)
300dpi = 90kp"^2 and at 8x10" thats 7.2Mp and at 4x6" its 2.1Mp (4*6=24*90k)

a 2650x1920 sensor dimentions in pixels /300ppi is 8.83" x 6.4" which is 1:1.37 (almost 3by4.11 most closely to a 3:4 monitor) and a 4x6" is 1:1.5 ratio (2:3) or 2.66x4 making the difference unsymetrical therfore some cropping must occur or the border must be dissimilar between the horizontal and vertical somware in the order of about 12%

it gets even worse because an 8x10 is 1:1.25 (8.5x11 paper is 1:1.3 almost 3:4) and 11x17 is 1:1.54 and 13x19 is 1:1.46 the overall problem is our " measurement system when everything else is metric