Yes, but I’ve never really liked this explanation. Define “improvement.” 2xs the pixels gives you two times the information. Because of the way printers have defined terms, resolution is usually given as dpi when sent to output devices. So, if you double 300 dpi, you get 600 dpi. As we’ve mentioned above, 300 dpi is 900 dots in a square inche, and 600 dpi is 3600 dots per square inch. This is where your “you need to quadruple the pixel count to double the resolution comes in.”
However, I’ve never really bought this. To me, twice as much information is just that, twice as much information. Is it “two times improvement?” I don’t know, because that is a meaningless statement. With twice as many pixels, you can make a print twice as big in area. For example, if you can get an 8x10 at 300 dpi, with double the pixel count you can get an 11 x 14 (approx), which is twice the size of an 8 x 10 (by my definition). If you quadruple the pixel count, you can get a 16 x 20 at 300 dpi. To me, that’s quadrupling the size, as a 16x20 consists of four 8x10s.
But the point that has been made a few times before remains: more pixels does not equal better.
This is no reflection on your camera, as I’m not familair with it, but I do wish that the megapixel hype would go away. All that the pixel count tells you is the file size, really. As others have said, the sensor type is far more important, but so too is the quality of the lens.
After all , a crappy $20 point-‘n’-shoot film camera has far more “resolution” than even a 9.8mp digital, but will the prints be sharper? Doubtful.
If the lens is projecting a cruddy image onto the sensor, then it doesn’t matter how much detail the sensor is capturing - the image is still going to be cruddy. Unfortunately, the marketing hype seems to have influenced every consumer into looking for lots of pixels, rather than quality glassware. An old 3mp digital SLR with a good lens is going to take a lot better pictures than a modern, budget-price 5mp fixed-lens snapper.
Conventional wisdom holds that 20 MP is equivalent to 35mm film, but, from my experience, I would say my 10 and 12 MP cameras hold information better. And at extreme ISOs like 3200? Forget it. My EOS 5D will run circles around any color film taken at that speed. I am simply amazed time and time again at how much better digital is at 800 and higher ISOs.
Absolutely! This point cannot be stressed enough. As I’ve said before, what use are 9 million pixels if they’re 9 million pixels of crap? Six megapixels is really good enough for most people’s needs. I have 10.2 and 12 on my cameras, but I really could get by with only 6 if I had to (and I have for a long time.) Like I said, I have a 2.7 MP print sized to 13" x 19" hanging on my wall, but I guarantee you it will look better than anything produced by a high-megapixel count point-and-shoot. The optics and quality of sensor make up for any raw magapixel number.
With SLR digital cameras, it is possible to take many pictures together quickly? I have one with an LCD screen, but when I take a picture, I can’t take another one for like 4 seconds. I miss the multiple shots of film cameras.
Resolution is conventionally measured linearly because that is how humans tend to perceive it. For example, resolving power of a lens is usually quoted as line pairs per millimeter. Magnification factors are also expressed linearly again because that is intuitive to humans. We are poor at judging such things as information content per unit area and even expressing it in terms of information is a relatively recent trend which would have foxed Fox Talbot. Until we get computers to view our pictures as well as just capture and store them, I am sticking to dpi.
I understand that. I was objecting to your use of the vague “2x improvement.” Twice the improvement how? For my purposes, being able to print at 11" x 14" rather than at 8" x 10" without interpolating pixels is 2x improvement. Is it twice the resolution? No. But it is twice as much information.
FWIW I’ve got some 10" x 8" prints on my wall which were taken with a 2.1-megapixel camera and several people have flat-out refused to believe they were that “low-res”. I upsampled using software before printing to avoid any obvious pixellation, and the results are pretty damn good.
IMHO anything over about 5mp is getting into the realm of diminishing returns, as the file sizes become unwieldy.
I’m a rank amateur with a camera, so I’ll apologize now if this is off base, but check your manual for ‘burst’ mode. On my Canon there’s button on the back that sets the camera for timed delay shots, single shots, or burst mode–5 or more shots per second. The button will cycle through these three modes.
You may also want to check the manual for the settings to use the viewfinder rather than the LCD screen, to speed things up.
Then say “twice as much resolution” and be precise. For me, the amount of cropping that I can do without destroying or interpolating information is just as important. Once again, I don’t disagree with what you’re saying–I just don’t like the vagueness of it.
Indeed they can. My (slightly dated) EOS 350D can take 3 frames per second, upto about 14 frames at maximum resolution, and almost unlimited if I reduce the quality. Newer cameras do even faster - the EOS 30D can do 5fps, and the top-of-the-line EOS 1D Mark II weighs in at a quite astounding 8.5fps.
However, even more modest point-and-shoots have some ability to take multiple pictures; it’s just that the number of frames per second and the maximum number of frames might go down. And most of them have a movie mode, of course - something no SLR can do.
I think my D50 can do around 2.5fps or something like that. I’ve played around with a lot of the point and shoots at work and they seem to be under 2fps, usually arond 1fps. A lot of the point and shoots out now have burst/continuous mode, they just can’t beat an SLR. But producing good pictures from an SLR (not shooting on auto) is more difficult that producing a nice one with a point and shoot. But if you have the knowledge they are amazing.