It almost certainly is.
I know that pixel quantity is not the only technical factor in the quality of a pic. I get that. But I can’t help feeling satisfied most by the sheer amount of information/detail I am able to get from each picture. I don’t want it to seem like I am arguing. I am glad my camera outperforms the older one in all the other aspects, and the pictures I have taken so far prove that.
My concentration on the mp rating as a big factor have been influenced by the pictures I have seen on the net from camera enthusiasts. I have been struck by the brilliant detail that results from resizing (smaller) a high-megapixel shot compared to resizing a lower-megapixel shot to the same dimensions.
The biggest adjustment I had to make when switching to digital photography was becoming more aware of lighting levels. Most digital camera get fairly grainy in low-light conditions; couple that with my camera’s rather puny flash, and I always try to have more lights available if I’m taking shots indoors or at night. Some of this can be fixed in Photoshop, but I’d rather avoid that if possible.
And another recommendation for Photoshop Elements. 95% of the power of Photoshop, but at 25% of the price.
I have started taking my CF cards to a local photoshop. I stand right there behind the woman and pick out the pictures I want her to print out, she hits a couple of preset photo enhancements and prints it out. Took about 20 minutes to get almost 100 4x6 prints done from my trip to Maui last January. Very nice.
I am using Print Shop Pro 8 right now, haven’t done the upgrade to 9 yet. Easy to use, some nice scripting abilities, good results, and cheap compared to Adobe. I hope none of that changes now that Corel has bought it.
FYI, in case you weren’t aware, the camera almost certainly stores all the settings it used for each shot as some sort of file info with each file. So in Photoshop you could go to File > File Info and find out what all the settings were. That way you can look back later and see what settings produced what final results, without having to keep track as you shoot.
This is essentially what my roommate does, too. She goes on yearly vacations to exotic foreign lands, and comes back with hundreds of digital shots. She pares them down to the 100 or so that are actually worth keeping, puts the files on one CD, and takes them over to Walgreens to have prints made, at something like 20¢ apiece.
I’m pretty picky, but Walgreens prints have never cut it for me. If I want to print something I care about, I either do it at home on my Epson 1280 (also check out the Canon i900 or the Canon i9x00 series. Absolutely incredible printers) or send it out to a professional lab. A high-end lab can do simply incredible things with your file. I saw a 4.1 Megapixel file blown up to a 30x40 inch wall print and you couldn’t really tell all of the pixel interpolation going on unless you knew what to look for. Even my 2.74 megapixel Nikon D1 can print high-quality 11x14s at home if you know what you’re doing.
The only problem with home printing is that you need to color calibrate your workflow, from camera to monitor to printer. This can take some time, but once you set it up correctly, the results you can achieve are far far better than the crap Walgreens churns out.
Even better are labs where you can send out your digital files to be printed on photographic paper with light rather than printed with ink. These are the most vibrant prints with the widest color gamut. You can reproduce colors such as deep oranges and greens which are simply not possible with a conventional 4- or 6- ink set-up.
You’re absolutely right, pulykamell. Notice I said my roommate, not me. Walgreens is crap. I always take my shots to a pro place. I was only pointing out the convenience of being able to choose which of your shots to put money and effort into that digital makes possible.
I have got to say, I see no value in printing my own digital photos. It’s a hassle, the quality is substandard to a professional photo finisher and it’s more expensive once ink and photo paper is factored in.
I upload my pictures to a service and pay far less for far better quality pictures with quick turn around time (usually 5 days). I’m in Canada, so I use a local drugstore website (Jean Coutu). It takes just a few minutes to place my order, I don’t have to pay in advance and I get notification that my prints are waiting at my local store where I can pick them up and pay whichever way I choose (no credit card required). I have also used a high end photo finisher’s website, but honestly did not see any improvement over the drugstore site.
The one occasion where I could not wait, I went to a photo store kiosk and printed them off myself. Still more cost-effective than home printing.
It’s possible that Jean Coutu has a better system than Walgreens (couldn’t be much worse), or it could be that the “high end” shop you chose had the same poor attention to detail that a drug store has. Not all supposedly pro shops have that much higher quality than anywhere else, you have to check around. I tried several different shops in my area before I found one that produces absolutely stunning quality prints, even from quickie snapshot cameras. Well worth the slightly higher price they charge.
More pixels does not always mean better photos. When more photosites are crammed onto a sensor of a given size the result is more quantum and electronic noise which often means worse images. pulykamell mentions the Nikon D1 which have a low pixel count but makes incredible images and this is becaus it has a sensor many times larger than that in a consumer camera.
I suggest you set lower resolution, 3-4mp, for everyday JPG photos. The in camera downsampling will reduce noice in the final images. You may find you like them better.
When you are ready to take serious photos for best image quality shoot in raw mode. Don’t bother with TIFF which is just a waste of processing time and storage space.
I read somewhere that my camera has a larger CCD than other cameras.
It also has noise reduction (and vibration reduction), but noise reduction is something I can do post-process so I haven’t bothered to use it yet.
I am unconvinced by all this down-playing of Megapixel quantity (sorry. I don’t mean to step on people’s toes ) The pictures I have taken at 8mp have been impressive for their level of minute detail compared with the same shots taken with my old 3mp camera. The biggest disappointment in that camera was the pixel rating. The deficiency stood out like a sore thumb (I have good short range eyesight). I will set my new camera at 3mp and take some shots, but I can’t see the point in taking at 3 and losing all that data when I can take at 8 and have all that room to play with/crop/shrink my pictures.
Then again, your two cameras may sharpen the pictures different amounts at their default settings.
More pixels ain’t necessarily a good thing - some of the latest 8MP sensors in P&S cameras are relatively noisy. Signal to noise ratio gets worse as more elements are crammed onto a given sensor.
Tell me about it! I have a fairly nice digital camera and I was absolutely dismayed at the shots I took at a friend’s wedding. Luckily I wasn’t taking the shots for her, just for my own albums, but I would have liked to have some come out good enough to share with her. Inside the church wasn’t terrible, but most of the lighting was ambient light from windows instead of floodlight style and they didn’t come out very well. The reception down in the dining hall was far worse. Some of it cleans up by adusting brightness, gamma, etc. but I hate having to do that and it never looks as good after being tweaked IMHO.
Bang on - that’s why DLSRs are so relatively low in noise at high ISO values, because they have much larger sensors than P&S cameras. A DLSR sensor at ISO 800 or so has around the same noise as a P&S sensor at ISO 100-200 or so.
No CD for me. I take the CompactFlash to the store. And not a chain store, it is a local pro place that does 1 hour developing too. Get very nice results with less effort than it would take me.
I am on my third digital camera. This time I have a Canon Pro1 - 8mp. My father has an Olympus 3.2mp. He was taking far better shots than I was which annoyed me to no end. So, I spent the time learning how to do things right and now can take pictures that rival his when you look at them on a typical screen. It is only when you view my pictures full size that you can see the benefit of having the larger pixel count. I’ve taken about 2000 picts with it so far since I got it in August.
Get yourself a device like the Archos Gmini 220. It has a cf card slot built right into it, so you just plug your card in and download onto the 20GB drive. It is about 3/4 the size of a floppy drive and about 3/4 of an inch thick. Saves on buying the large (and expensive) cf cards that you need if you take lots of picts.
Also, I use IRfanview to display my images. It is freeware. Get the plugins. Hit ‘e’ while a picture is up and you get the exif information giving you f-stop, shutter speed, etc. Hit ‘f’ and it switches between actual picture size and fit to screen. Hit ‘enter’ and you end up in slide show mode full screen. Use the arrows or space bar to move back and forth. Easy. Bonus is that if you hit ‘t’ you get thumbnails which you can then browse through, or save as html. I use the html to save the picts for my webpage that my family has access to.
Not that it’s a bad product, but 1 Gig CF cards are currently selling for $40-$50 in the after Christmas sales. I think digital memory has come down in the price enough that the off-camera storage solutions are no longer the best choice.
Unless your camera happens to use exotic memory like Sony Memory Sticks $60 for a off-brand 256MB stick last night. The actual Sony brand sticks are higher. To top it all off, the next model in the same line as the one I have takes CF or Memory Stick. A 1 gig memory stick will set you back $250 if you get the off brand or over $400 if you get Sony. Oh well. I’ve got about a gig in memory sticks now so I can switch out and I’ve got cardreaders and USB drives for even more storage if I need it. I’d just love to be able to start shooting in TIFF versus .jpeg but with a 5 megapixel camera it just eats up memory sticks too fast. I can get about ten shots on a 256 card in TIFF mode versus 95 in highest resolution .jpeg
Of course as soon as I post I check out the current prices and they are as you say. It seems that prices not only dropped since my purchase, they plummetted. Still a 1gb flash card is $129 Canadian and for the cost of ~4 of them you can get something that holds 5 times the amount. I can fill a 1gb cf card easily in a day if I am busy. I’d suggest with a high megapixel camera you’d want to buy the fastest cf card you can get, so that would add another $30 to the price. (Given the prices though, I am off to the store to pick up the latest Lexar 80x cf card. My IBM 1GB disk is really, really slow when taking lots of picts in a row.)
I can guarantee you that improvements in your photos are not brought about by improvements in your equipment, but improvements in your technique. My nephew is a photographer and has taken photos with a disposable camera that I would kill to have taken. Looking back at his work when he was a teenager makes it obvious that he just has a far better eye than me.
The advantage with digital cameras (if they have good LCD screens) is that you can sit and look at a composition while changing settings and see waht you will end up shooting. This site has a series of comprehensive articles on photographic composition. With a digital you can work through the lessons without any processing costs.
Walgreens is crap. I always take my shots to a pro place. I was only pointing out the convenience of being able to choose which of your shots to put money and effort into that digital makes possible.
$60 for a off-brand 256MB stick last night. The actual Sony brand sticks are higher. To top it all off, the