High resolution!!!!!!!!

Hi All

Well I know absolutly nothing about photography, cameras or anything to do with it so need your help what is a high resolution picture, I will tell you why I ask I need a photo blowing up to quite a large size and was told I would need to take a picture with a high resolution camera I though all cameras took the same sort of picture, silly me



Mo

Hi Mo, welcome to YoP

In short, larger Mega Pixel cameras give you higher resolution pictures.

So a 12MP camera will give you a higher resolution picture than a 6MP camera.

The larger you want to blow up a pic, the more resolution/MPs you will need.

Hope that helps!

What Azz says is true regarding 'resolution' although the mega pixel count is just one thing that contributes to the image quality.

The more mega pixels you cram onto a sensor = the less space available for each pixel on the sensor.

http://www.yophotographer.com/page.p...ht=mega+pixels

Without getting too technical the more receptors you put on a sensor the smaller each receptor site needs to be. The smaller it is the less light it can gather and therefore the smaller the electrical charge it generates.

This means that the electrical signal has to be amplified and the more you have to amplify the signal the more noise it generates which degrades the final image.

There is also the rule of diminishing returns to consider. The difference between the linear size of the image created by a 6Mp camera over a 4Mp camera is quite significant (2464x1632 as against 3008x2000) but the increase in linear size of the image between a 6Mp & a 8Mp is less significant (3008x2000 as against 3504x2336).

So what is a high res camera. The best you can get or afford but don't forget if you put a cheap lens on the front of a top notch camera the pictures will only be as good as the lens so you have to balance lens quality and camera quality.

Another point is if you have well exposed, sharp images taken on a 6/8 mp camera you can increase the size of the image using CS3 or Genuine Fractals. These are used an awful lot in the commercial world.

Steve

What I have is a Canon ixus 75 / 7.1 mega pixels 3x optical zoom is that any good? see I told you I know nothing and that makes me sound like a member of the mafia

What size are you hoping to enlarge the images too.

Steve

With 7.1 MP you should be good at A4 and OK up to A3 size 'I think'.

Printing at A3 would give better results 'un-zoomed'. That said, your 3x 'optical' zoom is a real zoom rather than 'digital' zoom which is really a cropped shot enlarged.

Photobox website is quite good for testing. Choose an image and it will tell you from the picture you select how big you can print before quality starts to dip.

Well I wanted it made in to a sticker for my van and I wanted it 40" x 20" but was told it had to be a photo taken with a high resolution camera other wise it wouldn't look right, which I can understand as I've tried on occation to enlarge pictures via photo box / bucket and they go all blury!!!!!




Mo

Just done a bit of googling and it seems that vehicle graphics need to be supplied as CYMK, and a minimum 150ppi.

CYMK (cyan, yellow, magenta and black) and RGB (red, green and blue) are ways that computers save the colour data in an image file. Your camera will output a RGB file so this will have to converted to CYMK via a program like Photoshop.

The 150ppi is the resolution and means that the file needs to be saved in such a way that when sent to a printer it needs 150 pixels per linear inch. At that resolution your 7 mp camera would print an image 20" x 15".

You say that you need 40" x 20". If the original image file is well exposed, sharp and well focused then you should be able to run the file through Genuine Fractals or even Photoshop to increase the size of the image to the size you require.

Is there anyone you know that would be able to do this for you? Failing that it may be worth contacting a local camera club and asking if they could help you do this for a small contribution to the club's coffers.

Steve

Thanks everyone for your reply, I'll look in to that Steve


Mo