Questions from a novice.

[Mad Mikeyboy]

I bought a digital camera not long ago and have been messing around trying to find out how to use the damn thing. Im not looking for a crash course in digital photography but perhaps someone can explain a few things for me.
My wife took some pictures on cd to the local photo shop to get some pictures put into frames photo #1 was taken on the super fine setting at 1200X1600 and was 1.08MB in size photo #2 also in super fine at 1024x768 and 407kb in size.

#1 was printed 8"x6"
#2 was printed 7"x5"

#2 was of a far superior quality to #1 which was quite poor. I'd just like to know why this is, cause I thought the bigger the image size was taken the better the quality would be. Or am I getting it the wrong way round.

Many thanks in advance.

[seany]

Well how does the original look on screen? When you saved it to the disc it might have been compressed which would cause a loss in quality

[Mad Mikeyboy]

Looks "grainy" on screen too, not too hot.

[seany]

That's just part taking photo's. Lighting, movement while taking a photo and many other things can spoil a photo. No matter what mp your photo is or camera for that matter. Grainy normally means that the iso is too high.

Mp does not have much to do with quality. If you take a poor shot, a high mp won't make a jot

[Mad Mikeyboy]

Excuse the ignorance again , what's iso?

I've checked and when in manual mode it's set at 400. I know I should probably read the manual but I'm lazy what can I say.

[seany]

http://www.dpreview.com/learn/?/Glos...itivity_01.htm tell's you all about it there.

Best advice i can give you to keep it simple until you learn more about your cam settings... If it looks good on screen it should make a good print. better to take photos at a large size so you can toy about with them

[Mad Mikeyboy]

That seems to be it, at least I know what that means now. I was experimenting with the manual settings and I think I forgot to change the iso setting back to auto.Thanks.