Digital Camera Question

[chaos]

I know this probably isn't your specialty, but I am going on vacation in a month and have a question about my digital camera. I have a Konica Minolta camera that has the ability of taking photos at resolutions up to 2816x2112 pixels in fine quality (it is a 6 megapixel camera). Disregarding memory card space, are there any disadvantages to taking pictures in 2816x2112 resolution? I have plenty of memory cards so I am good there.

[the_pm]

The only disadvantages are that you'll have to resize every picture you want to post online or send via email (a macro/action within your bitmap editor of choice should make this process fairly painless). Write times to your memory might be pretty long too, which means it will be hard to take pictures rapidly.

[chaos]

With Fireworks, the macro won't be hard to set up, and write times are still very fast seemingly. The camera automatically lowers resolution if you press and hold the button and engage rapid shot mode. So you are saying that taking a 2816x2112 on a six megapixel photo recepter won't cause a loss in quality in the end photo?

[Christina]

2816x2112 is fairly large especially for the average user. Large enough to get an enlarged print, and large enough to downgrade to any smaller sizes for smaller prints, web, and e-mail use. There's no real disadvantage other than memory cards and the type of cards your camera takes.

[crazyfish]

You will have a very nice photo once you are done. I have a 5 megapixel camera and the quality of the photos is amazing.

If you want to quickly resize a photo and reduce the quality so that its easier to send to someone via email or IM or whatever. I use this free product, http://www.freeimagebrowser.com/article2608.html works well for batch resizing.

[chaos]

Cool, I was worried about the camera interpolating pixels. Obviously, the camera can't possibly have as many photo cells as pixels in the file, but if you think that there is no quality loss, I will just leave the files this big. The problem is that I am going to Washington DC, and I need to make sure that the photos are done right. I can't afford to screw the photos up on this vacation. Thanks for the input.

[crazyfish]

Take some pics before you go and try printing them before you go.

Are you worried about quality when printing or for digital work?

[chaos]

Digital Work more, but I do intend to print quite a few. After the trip, I was going to make a presentation in Premier that brings together all the videos and pictures fromd DC. I have noticed that the photos don't look very good in an editor, sort of grainy, but the pictures are amazing when you print them. Do all pictures from these kinds of cameras look bad in photo editors (at least while the image is still full sized)?

[ethicaldesign]

I think it's usually best to take the picture at the maximum uninterpolated resolution, then deal with rescaling later (rescaling algorithms in photoshop will tend to be much better than those on a camera I think).

If the camera is interpolating the image to reach those resolutions, then it'll just be taking the photo at the uninterpolated resolution then scaling up itself I think, and you might find that the quality isn't so good as if you'd took it at the max. uninterpolated res. then scaled up in photoshop yourself later (not to mention saving yourself space on your memory card).

I'm no photography expert, so could be wrong, but that's the way I understand it to work.

I guess the best way to judge it would be to take some photos yourself and try it out and compare the results before you go.

[ethicaldesign]

Digital Work more, but I do intend to print quite a few. After the trip, I was going to make a presentation in Premier that brings together all the videos and pictures fromd DC. I have noticed that the photos don't look very good in an editor, sort of grainy, but the pictures are amazing when you print them. Do all pictures from these kinds of cameras look bad in photo editors (at least while the image is still full sized)?

That might be down to exposure length (if your camera has a setting for that try increasing it). For quick snaps or movement shots you'll probably want a short exposure, but for more static images a longer exposure will reduce grain I think (though you may need to use a tripod as hand shake can introduce blur - on my camera at least).