Megapixel arguement

[McBunny]

the bigger the sensor and the higher the mp the better compared to a small sensor large mp number small sensor lower mp number has less issues

 

[sn00p]

am I right in thinking the following:

the megapixel figure refers to how many pixels per square inch (or something similar) on the cell.

No.

It only refers to how many pixels there are on the sensor. Cameras don't deal with real world units, only pixels. This is where the much of the confusion in this thread is occuring!

 

[-Leigh-]

I think that we should just forget this thread and be happy someone invented the camera so we could have p**n.

 

[TeZ]

^indeed, this is geting VERY dry

 

[GR7]

I have also wondered about this pixel thing and my local council have an annual 'competition' for their calendar and until last year all the entries had to be on old fashioned slides until fewer people entered and said it was because they only use digital cameras.

This year they have allowed us to use digital entries as long as they are 6m+ pixels... my newest camera has about 10m pixels so will my pictures come out better/clearer/larger with a 10m pixel camera rather than a 6m pixelled camera or will there be no difference?

 

[TeZ]

they will be better imo

 

[dk]

like i said, both the same size, probably 6x4 or 5x7 ncan't remember and I don't think a Boots photo processing printing press will have a problem with resolution, doubt you could trouble it, its no HP deskjet!

Ok, so a probably a high resolution printer.

Your image will have more detail in it (i.e bigger) than your fathers which is why it appears better when printed.

As your fathers image smaller (less pixels) then it'll probably have to scale up which will mean creating detail from existing pixels, i.e what KDF showed above.

If the printer was only 300dpi then they'd probably look identical printed. (give or take the difference in quality between the cameras)

yes but now we have moved from image size to size on screen to quality of printer.

we are all discussing too many variables here.

 

[sn00p]

Ok, so a probably a high resolution printer.

Your image will have more detail in it (i.e bigger) than your fathers which is why it appears better when printed.

As your fathers image smaller (less pixels) then it'll probably have to scale up which will mean creating detail from existing pixels, i.e what KDF showed above.

If the printer was only 300dpi then they'd probably look identical printed. (give or take the difference in quality between the cameras)

yes but now we have moved from image size to size on screen to quality of printer.

we are all discussing too many variables here.

But you said that 2 different images from 2 cameras with different megapixel sensors produced 2 different quality outputs, it's exactly the case that KDF showed above with his image resizing. Your image contains substantially more pixels which will require less scaling when printing and therefore less "generated" image.

You only get real world coordinates by printing or setting the PPI in the image.

 

[Clart]

I have also wondered about this pixel thing and my local council have an annual 'competition' for their calendar and until last year all the entries had to be on old fashioned slides until fewer people entered and said it was because they only use digital cameras.

This year they have allowed us to use digital entries as long as they are 6m+ pixels... my newest camera has about 10m pixels so will my pictures come out better/clearer/larger with a 10m pixel camera rather than a 6m pixelled camera or will there be no difference?

there will be more detail, and pixels in the image taken at 10mp (dependant on quality of the sensor) Also the image will be phyically bigger and take up more file space.

 

[G_F]

KDF, really not sure I know what you are talking about as why would you reduce the size of it and then make it bigger? Thats not really proving any point, it was probably done in paint too which is why that happens.

your argument seems to be geared towards viewing on a computer screen whereas when we are talking about a 6x4 picture, thats the size of a printed photo, jsut like 5x7 is too.

Resize it down to mimik the resizing down done when printing to something like 6x4 from a high MP image.

Paint ? peeeelease.. I don't do "windows". I used GIMP which is a very good photo editor. The point Im trying to make is.

An image is resized down for printing and a lot of the pixels are lost, hence when you size it back up it looks s**t, thereby proving that detail is lost and that a 3mp and 7mp will look almost identical when printed in 6x4.

The only advantage of High MP images is their ability to be printed at much bigger sizes.

All you are doing though is resampling the image. You are getting confused between pixels and resolution

For example here's a screen from PhotoShop (and PhotoShop Elements) which allows you to change the pixel width and height of the image.

You can see here we are starting out with an image which is 1000 pixels wide and 640 pixels high. Let's assume we want people who still have 640x480 displays to be able to see all this image at one time. To do that we have to reduce the image size. Let's say we want to make it half as big, 500 pixels wide by 320 pixels high. What do we do? Well, we ignore what's in the document size box, since that ONLY affects the way the file will be printed. The data in the Pixel Dimensions box is all that counts as far as web display is concerned.

read the link posted in this thread

 

[unofficialPete]

Can I be a pain in the arse and throw digital noise handling into the 'more mega pixels' are better argument?

Forget MP's, sensor size is where its at...

 

[dk]

too many computer geeks in here forgetting about the photography element!

 

[jimmy_mac]

Can I be a pain in the arse and throw digital noise handling into the 'more mega pixels' are better argument?

Forget MP's, sensor size is where its at...

Yes, good argument.

The new point and shoot cameras are reaching 8mp, but the noise and blur on the image can be quite high especially whilst using zoom, the 7.2's etc give a much cleaner, sharper image

 

[-TA-]

fun fun fun!

just so you know, the printers boots/jessops etc use are 300dpi in sRGB totaly different technology to a desktop printer, they have no point being over 300 as the human eye cant tell the diffrence!

anyway, as this thread proves, there is no simple answer, and there are soooooooooooooo many factors involved, and a big one is the person using the camera!!

what makes a good image itself is subjective, unless your looking from a purley technical view, which makes you a robot!

digital noise and artifacting does look poo compared to film grain tho.

 

[dk]

fun fun fun!

just so you know, the printers boots/jessops etc use are 300dpi in sRGB totaly different technology to a desktop printer, they have no point being over 300 as the human eye cant tell the diffrence!

anyway, as this thread proves, there is no simple answer, and there are soooooooooooooo many factors involved, and a big one is the person using the camera!!

what makes a good image itself is subjective, unless your looking from a purley technical view, which makes you a robot!

digital noise and artifacting does look poo compared to film grain tho.

hmmmm, i agreed with you until i reread and thought about it, and i can definitely tell the difference between a picture printed at 300dpi and 600dpi or higher still, so thats not true IMO, no way!

 

[Dink]

what MP sensor does the human eye have?

 

[unofficialPete]

what MP sensor does the human eye have?

http://www.clarkvision.com/imagedetail/eye-resolution.html

576 megapixels.

 

[Dink]

i always thought that there would be a resolution as there can be only so many rods and cones

 

[dk]

LMAO, now this IS getting weird, so my 576MP eye can't see more that 300 dpi.......

 

[-TA-]

fun fun fun!

just so you know, the printers boots/jessops etc use are 300dpi in sRGB totaly different technology to a desktop printer, they have no point being over 300 as the human eye cant tell the diffrence!

anyway, as this thread proves, there is no simple answer, and there are soooooooooooooo many factors involved, and a big one is the person using the camera!!

what makes a good image itself is subjective, unless your looking from a purley technical view, which makes you a robot!

digital noise and artifacting does look poo compared to film grain tho.

hmmmm, i agreed with you until i reread and thought about it, and i can definitely tell the difference between a picture printed at 300dpi and 600dpi or higher still, so thats not true IMO, no way!

on a RGB scanning lazer photo printer there is no point, its produced by chemical reactions on the paper, its a totaly different to a inject/bubble/toner etc

i've discused such things with a couple of Fuji enginers, i used to work on the things for two years! ( pants job )

just so you know, supply the lab with 300dpi jpgs with minimum compression in sRGB at the cameras max resolution, from a RAW file = Best Quality,
dont bother with Tiffs, will end up with stupidly big files, and the high streets labs cant cope!

on injects it does however, got a Canon ipf8000 at work, dady of a printer! 2,400 x 1,200 dpi

 

[Clart]

y'know sometimes, when you wish you'd never started something???

 

[JJ!]

y'know sometimes, when you wish you'd never started something???

lol! on a positive note my new canon 850is arrived today and it takes great pics! even though there 7.1mp

 

[KDF]

I gave up..



There's more important things in life lol