I have a Canon EOS (not an SLR) that’s a few years old. It’s 5MP. Here’s the requirements for digital images from a magazine:
The photos I take with my camera seem to barely meet the quarter page requirements.
So, questions:
[ol]
[li]Am I doing something wrong? Can I get better pixel resolution from my camera?[/li][li]If not, can you recommend the cheapest camera that would meet the full requirements? I’d love an SLR (it’s what I used before going digital).[/li][/ol]
Just to point out - as will be obvious I’m not a professional photographer, but nor am I aspiring to be. This is so I can supplement a writing career. I don’t need to know about the difficulty of getting published etc etc. So keep it technical (but not too technical!) and thanks for all responses in advance.
No idea. I sync it straight to iPhoto on a Mac. When I export from this they appear as jpegs.
I think you maybe right. Just had a look at it and it’s a Canon PowerShot S2. I said EOS because that’s what my old SLR was, and the controls are similar. Ideally I’d like to go back to an SLR (I really miss a wide angle lens).
What are RAW images (simply), I’ve heard the term? The specs I linked to don’t seem to mention them.
Exactly what I was going to say. I have a 5mp camera and it outputs 2560 x 1920 pixels at maximum resolution.
1240 x 930 pixels is only about 1.15mp, so if you’re only “barely meeting” that then you’re clearly not shooting at maximum resolution.
BTW, what model is your camera? You say it’s an EOS but then say it’s not an SLR. I thought EOS was what Canon called its digital SLR range?
OK, I see you answered that. According to DPReview, the maximum image size is 2592 x 1944 pixels, which should be fine, resolution wise.
RAW image means that the camera outputs the raw data from the sensor, rather than converting it to a JPEG in-camera. The files are much bigger, but give you the benefit that you can convert them to JPEG using much more advanced methods than the camera uses, so you can recover much more information, tweak exposure better and so on.
Having looked at more of my images I think you are right. I think part of my head is getting confused between MP and file sizes. But my file sizes are still nowhere near 13.2MB.
What MP would I need to get up to full or double pages? And any cheap recommendations?
I suspect that the file sizes you quote as the requirements are based on TIFF files, which are much larger than JPGs with the same dimensions.
If you shoot in RAW mode (and I have checked and now see that your particular camera doesn’t offer this feature), then save as a TIFF, then the file would likely be that big. I know the picture desk where I work prefers TIFF images, as they are not compressed like JPEGs are.
Some cameras also give the option of outputting directly as TIFFs.
From the requirements:
Full page: 2569 x 3425 pixels would be 8.8 mp
Double-page spread: 4961 x 3425 pixels would be 17mp.
Most SLRs are in the 12mp range, so I think some judicious upsampling in a graphics program would be needed. Upsampling to, say, double the resolution still normally gives usable files.
I understand! (Apart from the bit I quoted, and I don’t think it’s important for me).
Thanks for all the help to everyone. I’ll probably stick with what I’ve got, as I say writing is my main gig, but any thoughts on the cheapest good SLR. I like Canons but could change.
Have a look at www.dpreview.com - it has a huge collection of reviews. For an entry-level DSLR the EOS 450D could be a good bet. You can get it for £400 in the UK (body only) these days.
One final note on picture quality, as I alwasy say in this type of thread… megapixel counts mean nothing without good quality glass on the camera. Some phone cameras nowadays are 5mp, but that doesn’t mean they take betrter pictures than a first-generation 3mp digital SLR. You can have all the pixels in the world, but if the lens is junk, the pictures won’t be any good. (35mm film is said to be equal in resolution to a ~30mp digital sensor, but a cheap point-‘n’-shoot film camera won’t outperform a decent 5mp digital!)
I have an S2 if you turn on the camera, and push the function button the very bottom row of settings is size. Setting the camera to large is 2592 X 1944.
I don’t know about outputting in RAW, check the manual for that.
Thanks for the reply. I generally do have this as the setting, but instead of checking the camera specs I looked at some of my pics and chose a rare low res one by accident. It doesn’t do RAW apparently.
It’s actually not a bad amateur camera, with a good 12x optical lens and the ability to play around with the aperture and shutter speeds. It’s just been overtaken by technology rather quickly. My complaints now are the two screens are useless in bright sun, 5MP is low nowadays, and I really, really miss a wide angle lens.
Colophon, thanks again for the answers. Amazon has the EOS 450D with a 18-55mm for £420, which would be lovely, but even that’s a fair bit of money for me. I will have a think.
You also said that picture desks preferred TIFF files to jpegs. Will they reject jpegs or is this just a preference? And you don’t happen to work on the picture desk of a travel mag, go you?
No, but I used to work on the subs desk of the travel section of a newspaper. Our picture desk was fairly free and easy about file sizes, as newsprint is less demanding than glossy stuff. They still preferred TIFFs, but would take JPG. I think some magazines might only take TIFFs - you’d have to check. But of course, there’s nothing to stop you converting your JPG files into TIFFs yourself - any graphics program ought to do that easily.
Remember you’re talking to a moron*. I’ve just tried this and I can do it. The file size gets much larger as you said it would. I have loads of follow-up questions! Is there somewhere you can point me, as I don’t want to keep bothering you.
*In my defence I am a pretty ok photographer, I’ve just never known much about file types and image manipulation. I have a ‘borrowed’ Photoshop so should really learn more.
Start with DPReview. They have some basic glossaries and articles, e.g. here on Digital imaging.
I should add that, of course, converting a JPG to a TIFF won’t increase the quality, but if a magazine wants a TIFF, you can send it. The ideal thing, of course, is to have the camera output as TIFF directly, or (even better) output as RAW and then convert to TIFF yourself. Most new cameras, even non-SLR ones, have TIFF and RAW modes. The downside is that the files are big, so your memory cards will rapidly fill up, and if you have a slow PC, you’ll struggle to process the files.
I don’t have a DSLR myself - I’m still stuck with a 5mp Panasonic, but I like the lens on it. Once I’ve paid off my credit cards, I might treat myself to an SLR…
Different places will have different submission guidelines, but JPEGs should be fine for most publications. Most photographers shoot either in JPEG or RAW (I don’t know of a single person who shoots in TIFF). There is no advantage to shooting in JPEG and then converting to TIFF before submitting, other than perhaps saving them a conversion step.
Just shoot high-quality JPEG and, if need be, convert to TIFF and submit those. I suspect they’ll be fine with JPEGs. Your file size should probably be around 1-1.5 MB for a good quality JPEG on a 5MP camera.
I still think that the file sizes that the company are referring to are RAW images as opposed to TIFF.
Shooting in jpeg and converting to TIFF just to reach the filesize doesn’t make any sense to me. A lot of companies are going to spot that a lossy file (jpeg) has been converted to lossless (TIFF) and reject it.
When judging the suitabilty of a photo to be printed at any given size, you have to look at more than simply the resolution (pixel dimensions) of the file. As another posted alluded to, the lens of the camera will have more effect on the sharpness of the photo than the sensor resolution. Also, lighting plays a huge role in how well details are captured.
A very important detail about digital camera sensors is that the full color pixels are interplolated from individual red, green and blue imaging sites on the sensor. Each site only sees one color, so each pixel lacks 100% of the detail that would be present if you scanned a film transparancy. So to get the equivalent resolution out of a digital camera, you really need more resolution that was recommended back when the workflow was drum-scanned transparencies.
As far as TIFF, JPEG and RAW formats compare: unless you understand what adjustments to make to a RAW file, you will gain little benefit from using this over your camera’s JPEG format. JPEG has picked up a negative stigma ever since it was used as a web format and website designers crushed the quality out of their images with agressive compression settings. A file saved as JPEG with a fairly high compression setting (80% or more) will retain a high enough quality to be used professionally. Repeatedly resaving a JPEG however will amplify the artifacts.
If your goal is to produce photographs to be professionally printed, there is really no substitute for high-end equipment. High quality cameras, lenses and lighting along with a good eye for composition is what makes the difference between snapshots and pro photography. Image editing with Photoshop can bring out the extra 10% that makes a good photo even better, but it cannot improve mediocre images.
Thanks for your full response. Can you just go over the above? Are you saying that every time you save a jpeg it loses quality? Ie in my situation it is saved from the camera onto iPhoto, then exported as a jpeg and attached to an email. Am I losing out each time?
I know I’m sounding like a dimwit, but once again this is not my main gig. Selling the odd image to go along with a piece really helps financially though.
