Digital camera advice

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My advice is go for a camera as best as you can afford, that has a high mega pixel, an optical zoom (as said above A MUST HAVE), & the biggest memory card you can afford.

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This advice is not strictly correct. The pixel count is not the be all and end all. Scroll back up to nearer the top where my first reply and a couple of other forumites spell out the issues.
When you're sat at your computer the overiding thing is that you have a top quality digital file to work with.
 
Re: how many pixels?

ooer. It depends on what you mean by print.
-If you do it yourself on an inkjet you can choose the resolution (dpi) to achieve the print size you want. You can increase the file size in PhotoShop, but it's not a true increase, just adding in suitable pixels to match the surrounding ones, ie. not an improvement.
-If you want a photographic print from the file they usually print at 300dpi, (but not always)
-If you take it to a bureau to be printed on a large format printer they can choose the resolution and some of the software that comes with the large format printers is superb at interpolating the pixel count upwards.
-If it's to be used reprographically in a four colour process it will be printed at 300dpi.


But if you have a 6 megapixel camera you'll get an image about 2000x3000pixels which will give a 17mb image (RGB) which will print at about 17x25.5cm (all approx) at 300dpi.

In photography everything is a compromise. Usually size versus quality.
 
Re: how many pixels?

Unfortunately it isn't actually that simple. Pixels per inch and dots per inch are not the same thing. In theory you could print just one pixel at 300dpi say at a size of 8"x8". You wouldn't want to of course - but you could.

The pixel count gives a useful indicator of how much information is being captured - therefore the more pixels the better - assuming other factors like chip quality and capture software are up to it.

For most 'snap' pictures 3m pixels are perfectly ok but I would advise going to 6m - after all - it doesn't cost that much nowadays.
 
Re: how many pixels?

ok, i know a bit about memory after 35 years in IT and i have an SLR with more lenses than a fly's eye. i don't have a photo printer because i don't do enough to justify the cost but if i walk into Boots they will only print up to a certain size for a given pixel count. i just wanted a quick reference like this
 
Re: how many pixels?

I mentioned the relationship between pixels per inch and dots per inch purely because so many people, inc. professionals in the industry, misunderstand this basic concept. Apologies if you think I was teaching granny etc - I made a judgement of your knowledge based on the question you asked.

The table you linked to provides a useful yardstick but doesn't give an absolute answer to that question - giving a different size print for different DPIs asking you to determine what quality you expect - begging the question "what do you mean by quality?"

Edited to add - I just had a good look at the Olympus website you linked to - even they are sloppy in their definitions - saying that the default capture on a digital camera is 72DPI when it patently is not. There is such a huge difference between pixels and dots. Pixels being (usually though not always) square or rectangular and joined up. Dots are round and separated from each other. Two entirely different technologies.

The convenient fact is that there is a loose correlation between the two - i.e. a picture reproduced at 300PPI on a commercial printer at 300DPI is the industry standard.
 
I'm a Luddite - have been sticking with film at least for my personal work until I am satisfied that the quality of digital has caught up /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif

But, having said that, I have been keeping an eye on the digi cameras to determine the moment when quality is sufficient for me to convert, and have been using some of them over the last few months. Of the ones that I've tried, I've had the following experiences:

Nikon D70 and the Canon 30D - the quality on these were not bad at all, and for a budget priced SLR you couldn't go wrong with either of them. Their quality was roughly comparable.

Of the compact digitals I tried one of the Pansanosics (I can't remember the model number, sorry, was 5 megapixel, and a Canon (again can't remember the model umber, but was one released about 8 months ago, 6 megapixel if I remember correctly). The Panasonic was very disappointing, and the friend I borrowed it off got rid of it and bought the Canon. The Canon was a bit better, but was very slow. And when I used it and discovered that I liked the picture, I would go out and retake it on film. Digital is great for this sort of thing, but it doesn't say much for the ultimate picture quality of this kind of camera...

On the (much) more expensive side I tried a Kodak Pro DSC14n, 14 megapixels. I was on the point of buying it, but was dissapointed with quality, so didn't - having read all the reviews I could get my hands on, I tried my own test by taking some pictures with it and my Nikon film camera using the same Nikon lens, then scanning the film, blowing them up and seeing which came out best. My old manual Nikon FM2 won. I didn't feel like investing 3000+ pounds in something where I wasn't happy with the picture quality. Now I'm waiting for the Nikon D2X to be released to try that, and may well go for it if I'm happy.

Having banged on about picture quality and said I'm a Luddite, I must say that quality is not the point of digital cameras, so this shouldn't really be seen as (much) of a criticism of them. They are GREAT things and fun to use, and the ability to see straight away whether an image works immediately is fantastic.
 
Re: Sorry

The 20D that I use is somewhat better than the 300 - using the same Digic II processor found in the more expensive 1D MkII. Also there are more than 8m pixels. My last camera was the 10D and there is a noticeable improvement over that - not merely the pixel count but also the definition in highlights and shadows.

I have to agree that the quality is not as good as film - no way would you make a comparison between a digital pic and something shot with a Hasselblad and Zeiss lens but it's certainly good enough for commercial work. If I need better definition in a still life I shoot 2 or more pics of a subject, just taking a section at a time, and stitch them in Photoshop.

I used to tell my clients that digital wasn't as good as film and managed to get a few more years out of my film gear but if I hadn't made the switch more than 5 years ago I'm sure I wouldn't still be in business.

I still ask my clients which medium they want me to shoot on - warning them that film is better but they are usually happy to go digital for convenience and cost saving - not just film, processing and Polaroid but also to save on scanning costs.
 
Re: how many pixels?

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We're now using a 6mp Nikon and can print with no discernible loss of quality at A4. I'm told A3 is doable but haven't tried it.

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Yep. despite the claims of printer manufacturers you will find that most images will print well at as low as 180dpi (or less) depending on the image.

A great deal depends on the printer manufacturer and model and the paper you use..
Your own post production messing with the image can improve it's appearance (for instance contrast is often confused with sharpness by the viewer) or wreck it.

The nature of the image itself can have an effect on your perception of a print quality.

And don't forget that the viewing distance for an A3 is greater than that of an A4 so the bigger dots shouldn't be more obvious.
Go up close to a big artic like a Sainsbury's truck and see how the images of fruit spilling along it's sides is just a mess of coloured dots.
 
"I'm a Luddite - have been sticking with film at least for my personal work until I am satisfied that the quality of digital has caught up"

Of course you could always buy a Hasselblad H1 body complete with 80mm lens and viewfinder coupled with the all new Phase One P25 medium format digital back - 22 million pixels - totally untethered - so no need to lug a laptop around.

All for just £19.995 + VAT- on special offer till end of March. Shall I put you down for two?
 
Re: Sorry

Absolutely, I'm sure the more expensive Canon produces superior images, but, of course, it's more expensive! Canon stole a march on Nikon in the digital SLR's, but Nikon seem to have clawed back to rival Canon with the D70 at the budget end and the (I suspect, though it's early to say yet) the D2x at the top end.

Perhaps my contribution about the quality of digital wasn't very helpful in the context of the original question, but I mentioned it for the purpose of introducing an overall persective. People tend to become a little starry-eyed with the technology and marketing blurb. The Kodak DSC Pro14n marketing people really irritated me by trying to claim that it was 'medium format quality' when it was (I think) self evidently still behind 35mm. Maybe I would have bought it if they hadn't falsely raised my expectations beforehand.

As I said, I actually found the 300D was pretty good for its price, perhaps because I had low expectations - the friend I borrowed it from was more dismissive of its quality. No doubt your 20D is much better. But what I really love to use is my Contax G2, which has the Zeiss lenses you refer to, with an E100G slide film, or equivalent. It produces really crispy and luminous images on 35mm film (Or my Mamiya 7, but that's another ball game altogether!)

With film, unless you're going to produce the print in the enlarger, the thing that limits the ultimate quality is the quality of the scanner. DPI in scanner resolution is fairly meaningless, what matters is how good the effective optical resolution of the scanner is (and it's ability to look into the shadows/highlights), in other words, how good the lens is as how good the sensor at resolving detail (which may bear little relation to its nominal number of pixels).

My scanner is a Minolta with a relatively antiquated 2880dpi, but the optics in it are not bad, so it produces a much, much better image than my recent Epson flatbed scanner with a higher nominal resolution. With Contax G2 + Minolta scanner I recently produced a series of prints for an exhibition printed to 60cm x 80cm, and they looked very crispy at any normal viewing distance.

I'm sure that this is all teaching my grandmother to suck eggs, but it's mainly for the benefit of anyone else looking in on the discussion /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif
 
I know, I know, I've been drooling over the thought of getting something like that, but don't think it would be good for street photography /forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif Still, might make a project by photographing the crowd that gathered round to look at it?
 
Re: Sorry

All valid points Simon. Very interesting tussles going on between the m'frs to leapfrog each other with newer, better technology. Latest to stir the waters is Pentax who have announced a new medium format digital camera.

If medium format comes down in price as the competition increases and market saturation starts to kick in, there should be a big drop in prices but until that day I'm happy to bide my time and work around the limitations of small format.
 
A word of warning about buying digital cameras overseas. Digital cameras is treated like computers, and do NOT carry worldwide warrenty, so before you do, check it out first.I used to work for OLYMPUS Australia.
 
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