Hi Dopers.
I’m about to buy one of two Olympus digital cameras. One is 3.3 mega-pixel model. The other is 2.1 (I hope my memory’s serving me correct).
These are so that we can send pictures of Lieu Lieu to grampies and occasionally post something to the SDMB.
My question is this…
Does the amount of mega-pixels a camera shoots at affect to download speed at which an emailed file is received?
Many thanks in advance!
lieu
Yes, the camera with more pixels produces larger files. But most cameras can be set to record at a lower resolution. Or you can use an image editing program to reduce the size.
I always record the image at the highest resolution, and if I decide to post an image to my homepage or e-mail it, use PaintShop Pro or some other software to resize it. A typical 3-megapixel camera produces a 500kb file. If you resize it to 640x480 it’d still be good enough for a web page and the file size will be about 50kb.
Oops, I meant if you resize the image and also increase compression it can be made as small as 50kb. JPEG uses a lossy compression, and compression is adjustable. High compression results in smaller files with lower image quality.
You don’t want to be sending 2-3megapixel files by email. Even 1.3 megapixel is too big. They are far too big to view on any computer screen. Terrific if you want an 8x10 print but that’s the exception. For most email I’d resize to 640x480 as scr4 says or 800x600 at the most. Keep the originals always in case grammy does want a print. You can upload it to Kodak at you leisure and have a print sent to her.
The best way would be to capture at full resolution, then resize down to 640x480 or so using a good image editor, then JPEG compress at around 90% quality. This should result in files of around 50KB in size each, with no noticable pixellation or loss of sharpness.
My new 4.1 MP camera can scale very cleanly down in its own software, or you can use Irfanview to it as well, plus Irfanview has a really good sharpening feature. In fact, I don’t know how they do it, but sometimes it’s like one of those cheesy sky movies - where they show a photograph of a car blurred out of all recognition it’s even a car, then “enhance the photo” to clearly read the license plate. 
Go for the higher pixel camera - just resize the photo in the camera or outside of it.
What they said. Shoot at the highest resolution you can, then deal with the images in the computer later by cropping and scaling down. If you ever want to print out that “perfect shot” you’ll appreciate having those extra pixels.
I bought mine about 2-3 years ago and got a 1.3MP. I have noticed the limitations on it more than once. For everyday stuff, it is great, but for wide outdoor landscape shots, or for trying to grab detail far away, it doesn’t always do the job.
1.3mp pictures come out at about 350-400K. Most of these photos you can scale down to 50-80kb without any significant loss in quality.