[monkeyleader]

So I'm sure most of us on here were already aware that more doesn't always mean better - at least in terms of mega-pixels.

An interesting article on the subject would suggest that around 6mp is more than enough for any one person.

Nige

[sinizterguy]

As pixels get smaller, technology and techniques used in processing the raw data to give you the final image is being constantly improved.

So the pixel noise that is shown on that site with the pixel size decreasing will be nowhere near anything like that.

So while the theory is correct, I doubt that 6MP is the "ideal" resolution. Itll probably settle at a higher value until the next generation of sensors which are more sensitive comes along.

[bodoman]

Interesting article, but after reading it i realised it was only talking about 6mp
maximum for compacts, apparently its okay to have more mp in a dlsr

[loz]

Originally Posted by bodoman

Interesting article, but after reading it i realised it was only talking about 6mp
maximum for compacts, apparently its okay to have more mp in a dlsr

Yep, upto 37 mp on an APS-C sensor till you get to the same noise as that 6mp compact.

[Tobers]

Saw a very interesting review of the Nikon D3 versus the Canon 1DSmk3 and for all intents & purposes the D3 was as good and better in some circumstances (i.e. high ISO). Hard to believe with half the number of pixels.

[jomike]

Thom Hogan makes some interesting predictions on his site about DX vs FX sensors (Nikonese for crop vs full frame) amongst other things.

Quote from the article:

"Let's get a long-range prediction out of the way first. One common email I've received a lot of since the D3 was announced and still continue to get is the "DX is dead" missive. I think the D300 proves that isn't currently true, but there still seems to be doubt about the future. Here's my prediction: DX won't die until we get to about 3.5 microns (the D300 is 5.5). That's about 34mp for those trying to do the math (~7000x4800). Thus, we've got a ways to go yet. We'll see 14-16mp in the next generation, 16-18mp in the subsequent generation, and so on. I suppose there is an off chance that three-layer sensor techniques might come before we exhaust where DX can go, but that also would mean that DX won't die.

I do question how far we need to go with DX, though. Frankly, I'm not sure that any of us really needs a low cost 34mp camera. But it's possible, and it will remain a truth that DX is cheaper to produce than FX."

Mike

i would agree totally if your only going to print up to about A4 but what if you need to make giclee prints of art work like I do, then pixelation becomes a hazard even if the colour and sharpness are superior in the 6Mp camera.

WILT

Yes this is definately correct and can be seen when comparing cameras such as casio exilim EX-Z1200(12mp) and the Panasonic Lumix TZ3(7.2mp). Where the panasonic camera outclasses the casio .

Hi Paul,

What is the largest image you have printed from images gathered by the lumix?

Wilt

Hi wilt
I have printed upto a4
your self

I have made prints @ 250 ppi from originals produced by a Vivitar 8300s Tiff image of 72 ppi via elements resizing to 30" x 17" on Somerset Velvet inkjet paper using American sourced pigment ink,on an epson 1520.These prints are now in local galleries .I consider 8mp to be the absolute lower limit for this size of print and have yet to be convinced otherwise.If some one has done better I would be interested in finding out how they managed it!
I do not doubt that someone with sufficient expertise with CS5 could do so but show me!

I am willing to post pictures of my art work with cropped inserts @ print size that show no pixelation .

WILT

[senu]

Originally Posted by Vivitaroner

I have made prints @ 250 ppi from originals produced by a Vivitar 8300s Tiff image of 72 ppi via elements resizing to 30" x 17" on Somerset Velvet inkjet paper using American sourced pigment ink,on an epson 1520.These prints are now in local galleries .I consider 8mp to be the absolute lower limit for this size of print and have yet to be convinced otherwise.If some one has done better I would be interested in finding out how they managed it!
I do not doubt that someone with sufficient expertise with CS5 could do so but show me!

I am willing to post pictures of my art work with cropped inserts @ print size that show no pixelation .

WILT

I have had a 2-3 30 x 24" canvas from an 8Mp and would tend to agree . However, I suspect one could print a little larger with a little drop in absolute resolution but at normal viewing distances it may well be acceptable.

Hi Senu,

Your experiences confirm my view regarding resolution -- remember to achieve 30" x 17" requires cropping from the original camera aspect ratio!.
I too could have easily achieved 20" x 30" but 1520's only print max 17" in one dimension. I repeat No one has proved to me yet that a CANON (or similar top range)5mp camera will do it for large prints .I am quite happy to be proved wrong!

WILT

[springtide]

I did read somewhere that with canvas printing you can basically double the max size of the print, since you are actually printing on material rather than paper, which is natually unsharp.

i.e. if the max theoritical printing size of a 6MP DSLR is about A2, then on canvas you'll get away with printing on A1.

Hi Springtide,

I only ever once printed onto canvas paper @A3 ,but it was not coated ,just the type you use for doing Acrylic or oil paintings and as such the end result was dull and lacklustre.I would guess you are right regarding the surface of any substrate.i.e the rougher the finish the less demanding on resolution.I used Somerset Velvet for the prints I mentioned earlier and I suspect that thats more forgiving than gloss photo paper but I,ll stand by what I said.

WILT

[springtide]

Originally Posted by Vivitaroner

Hi Springtide,

I only ever once printed onto canvas paper @A3 ,but it was not coated ,just the type you use for doing Acrylic or oil paintings and as such the end result was dull and lacklustre.I would guess you are right regarding the surface of any substrate.i.e the rougher the finish the less demanding on resolution.I used Somerset Velvet for the prints I mentioned earlier and I suspect that thats more forgiving than gloss photo paper but I,ll stand by what I said.

WILT

Hi WILT,

I'm sure you are right. BTW - I think that article is far from flawless in it's conclusions
Reminds me of a statement about a PC not ever needing more than 640k of memory!

[dazza74]

Had a bit of spare time so I thought I would have a play

Took this in Vegas on my original kodak 3.1 mega pixel compact digital a couple of years back.

Not had a chance to take a pic of an XJ220 since getting the D80 so decided to cut out the car and print it onto canvas at 18" x 30". Fairly pleased with the result given the resolution of the camera it was taken on :

Yep that looks fine on my " monitor " only you can tell if its pixelating on the canvas maybe you could crop a piece @ print size and post it to prove your right.I would be interested to see the result. Did you resize from the native (72dpi?) of the camera in an editor ? etc etc.

WILT

[dazza74]

Originally Posted by Vivitaroner

Yep that looks fine on my " monitor " only you can tell if its pixelating on the canvas maybe you could crop a piece @ print size and post it to prove your right.I would be interested to see the result. Did you resize from the native (72dpi?) of the camera in an editor ? etc etc.

WILT

The bottom picture you see is it on canvas at print size 18" x 30" the photograph was taken close up. When I opened the original it defaulted to 230 ppi size wise is was about 8" x 6", I then resized this to 22" x 34" (I'll eventually wrap the canvas around stretcher bars).

I,m not sure if Ive got this right but doesn't that mean your print resolution is around 60 - 70 dpi?

WILT

[dazza74]

Originally Posted by Vivitaroner

I,m not sure if Ive got this right but doesn't that mean your print resolution is around 60 - 70 dpi?

WILT

I set the printer to output at 1440 dpi / 2880 ppi. I normally resize the image at 320 ppi (read somewhere you should try to get it so it's divisible by your printer output e.g. 2880 / 320 = 8).

I,m slightly confused by this as the native DPI of my cheapo camera is 72 dpi
but the image size is something like 54 x 40 something inches,which means, to me anyway, That I can resize trading physical size for resolution, without the image becoming pixelated. You, however , are starting with a small 8" x 6" image
of highish resolution and expanding it in software to a much larger image at a higher resolution without pixelation. this in fact means that the MP count of a camera is in fact meaningless and Ive lost the argument !!

WILT

[RobDickinson]

Dont pay attention to DPI, utter falacy with digitial images , 72dpi was convinient for mac screens circa 1980's. most decent printers work at 1400 dpi.

As for megapixels, 6mp is enough to print a4 most times, if you want to print larger or crop heavily then more is better.

But it does depend who you are and what its going to be used for, new 1DsMkIII will be used for magazine covers, 2* A4 spreads, posters etc, if you need it you will know.

Thank you Rob,

But my whole point is exactly that -- I DO print at above A4 and do it using what was then a cheap 8MP camera.Had I bought an admittedly far superior camera of 5 MP or so, I would indeed have had better photographs but thats not the point.Nothing yet has convinced me that I could have printed
large art work with them. NO ONE has posted a crop of an image @ print size
say 30 x 20 from a 5mp camera without pixelation.Until then I,ll stand by what Ive said.

WILT

[springtide]

OK, here goes... (bit lost of where this thread has gone, mine you...)

On a DSLR, you can get away with printing the following on paper without too much noticable pixelation (ideally, half this figure). If you are printing on canvas, you can pretty much double this print size without any issues. In fact, the last canvas I had done (600x400mm) they wouldn't accept a Jpeg over 4MB (~6MP).

3MP approx A3 size
6MP approx A2 size
12MP approx A1 size

As the MP size increases, so does the need to be using the best quality glass. I saw a test with a cheap kit lens on a 12MP DSLR camera being out resolutioned by a 10MP DSLR camera, due to the fact that they has basically found the limits of the lens. On this test, swapping this lens causes the resolution figures to jump to what you would expect to get from a 12MP camera.

So, glass matters WRT resolution figures. If you try and think in your mind how a lens actually works, then it's fairly obvious that the resolution figures from an 8MP compact camera (with that tiny lens) isn't going to be able to match a good 8MP DSLR with a decent lens. If you haven't recorded the detail in the first place, then it's not much different to just using a image scaler later.

Which brings me to another good point. If you don't print yourself and are getting a Lab to do this for you, leave the image size alone!
You only want to scale the image once to keep the best quality, so unless you know the exact DPI and size of the printer, you are just likely to reduce the quality not increase it (due to scaling twice).
The bottom line is that the Labs will (hopefully) be using the best scalers anyway which may even be customised to the type of media being printed on, so you just need to sent the native resolution of the image.

[senu]

Originally Posted by springtide

....Which brings me to another good point. If you don't print yourself and are getting a Lab to do this for you, leave the image size alone!
You only want to scale the image once to keep the best quality, so unless you know the exact DPI and size of the printer, you are just likely to reduce the quality not increase it (due to scaling twice).
The bottom line is that the Labs will (hopefully) be using the best scalers anyway which may even be customised to the type of media being printed on, so you just need to sent the native resolution of the image...

Thanks for that
This is infact what those helpful guys at intelligence direct advice

Amazingly though a TIFF file from an 8Mp RAW file can reach 44Mb in size

All well and good,but I have never said that an 8mp compact could outperform a dlsr ,what I have said and no one has posted an image to prove me wrong
(as yet) , that using a cheap 8mp camera I can make largish images of artwork that will print up to 25"+ using pigment inks in Epson printers with no noticeable pixelation and have doubts about the ability of a 5mp camera of any Ilk being able to do so without loads of PP
The following image is possibly a worst case scenario for me in that its a photograph with much sharper edges than an artwork and yet I think it still
valid for the discussion. the insert is at slightly greater magnification than print
size which in this case 22" x 16" (would fit a 1520) ignoring flair and softness Ii think you would agree it is only just starting to pixelate

http://home.freeuk.com/wlt001/jersyinsnet.jpg

[dazza74]

Originally Posted by Vivitaroner

All well and good,but I have never said that an 8mp compact could outperform a dlsr ,what I have said and no one has posted an image to prove me wrong
(as yet) , that using a cheap 8mp camera I can make largish images of artwork that will print up to 25"+ using pigment inks in Epson printers with no noticeable pixelation and have doubts about the ability of a 5mp camera of any Ilk being able to do so without loads of PP
The following image is possibly a worst case scenario for me in that its a photograph with much sharper edges than an artwork and yet I think it still
valid for the discussion. the insert is at slightly greater magnification than print
size which in this case 22" x 16" (would fit a 1520) ignoring flair and softness Ii think you would agree it is only just starting to pixelate

http://home.freeuk.com/wlt001/jersyinsnet.jpg

I think the comparison you are trying to make is maybe in your favour given you'd have to go back a bit to find any D-SLR's below 6 MP. In my eyes that would be the only fair comparison to make. My gut feeling is that a photo taken on a nikon D100 6MP DSLR through decent glass would produce a better result than your compact, I could be wrong but recently did a print onto canvas 18" x 30" taken on a canon 30D (8MP) using L Glass lens, this I would say is comfortably in the same league as anything I've printed to date at the same size from my D80 or a Fuji S3 Pro both 10MP cameras. Basically I'd endorse "springtides" view point above it's more than just megapixels.

[springtide]

Originally Posted by Vivitaroner

All well and good,but I have never said that an 8mp compact could outperform a dlsr ,what I have said and no one has posted an image to prove me wrong
(as yet) , that using a cheap 8mp camera I can make largish images of artwork that will print up to 25"+ using pigment inks in Epson printers with no noticeable pixelation and have doubts about the ability of a 5mp camera of any Ilk being able to do so without loads of PP
The following image is possibly a worst case scenario for me in that its a photograph with much sharper edges than an artwork and yet I think it still
valid for the discussion. the insert is at slightly greater magnification than print
size which in this case 22" x 16" (would fit a 1520) ignoring flair and softness Ii think you would agree it is only just starting to pixelate

http://home.freeuk.com/wlt001/jersyinsnet.jpg

If you take a 6MP image from a really good DSLR (and lens etc), you can scale this to a 12MP file using software. However, in doing so you will basically soften the image. Basically you do not have the recorded information to be able to produce a sharp 12MP image. Same goes when you use a 8MP compact. The lens will not have the resolution figures to be able to produce a sharp image at 8MP (compared to a DSLR with a good lens). So you are in the same boat. You should not be printing an image to a size that will be causing the image to ever noticeable pixelation. If this is the case, the image should be upscaled to a higher resolution (wich is what the Labs do), since a softer image is preferable over a pixelalated image.
Make sense?

""since a softer image is preferable over a pixelalated image.""

I could not have put it better and this has been my argument all along

I hasten to add,that I see many examples of people on this forum and others for that matter who ostensibly have the name brand cameras that get such glowing reports,that regularly use some degree of unsharpmask as their final edit in CS2 .
The the image I placed at your disposal including the insert was "as is" direct from the camera but down sized and jpeg'd .warts and all and No one has posted a comparable picture from a brand name 5Mp " COMPACT" that refutes my assertions that the 8mp Vivitar is better for making large prints than a brand name compactof 5Mp or less. Sorry it was o/size but it does help the case I think.

WILT