Digital Cameras (not fishing related)

Killertraylor · 02-19-2003, 08:23 AM

I'm hoping that some of the less electronically challenged members can help me out. I've had an Olympus D-460 zoom for about 4 years now and it takes excellent pictures, but at 1.3 megapixels. We just had our first baby and I thought it would be good to upgrade to a 4 megapixel camera since my wife likes to print them. I'm afraid that I might be a little confused about the megapixel thing though. I went out yesterday, after doing lots of internet research and decided that the Canon S45 is the best compact 4 megapixel camera out there for the money. I bought one for $499 and took it home, charged up the battery and took some pictures at the highest resolution setting (something like 2200x1700) and then downloaded them to the computer. They looked worse on the computer monitor than my 1.3 megapixel pictures, and they printed pretty poorly as well. I didn't blow them up - I just tried printing a 3x4 sized picture and it looked about like the ones we print with the 1.3 camera. I'm confused - all the reviews of this canon s45 say it takes the best quality pictures, and I've got a decent color printer (HP 952c) with a brand new color ink cartridge. Do I just need to reduce the resolution down on the camera or am I missing something? Please, nerds - help me! I'm thinking maybe I should just take the camera back and put the money towards a bigger gun safe....

[ 02-19-2003, 09:57 AM: Message edited by: Killertraylor ]

Gus Orviston · 02-19-2003, 08:29 AM

nope should work as you suspect. double check the file size, if it isn't at least 750K and up to about 1MB you aren't capturing at the higher resolution of the camera. Your 1.3Mp files are about 200K or so for a comparison. Double check you camera settings, you might be looking at VGA quality output the cameras now do for posting to the web. ?

I have two, 1.6M Kodak..4 years old, and that is the minimum I would suggest to use for family photos. But nowadays, you get way more than that on the smallest cameras. Anything over 3.1 Mp is nearly lost in the noise. 2-3 Mp is a nice range for Digital pix, size is still managable and the quality is excellent.

gus

hack2ee · 02-19-2003, 08:53 AM

My wife and I have had similar problems with our sony camera at 4.1 megapixels. I rebooted my windows 2000 and cmos. This cleared up the problem for awhile, then had to do it again, but this time i uninstalled/reinstalled the photo imaging software only. Worked for awhile, now im having the same problems again. im thinking about getting adobe photoshop, and deleting my hp photo software. ps- I have a hp photosmart 1215. If i didnt have the sony, I could plug in the memeory directly into printer completely bypassing the computer. But I dont. good luck. ps- my wife says get a good ol film camera!

Killertraylor · 02-19-2003, 12:44 PM

Thanks to those who replied. I think the 4 mp cameras are a little too complicated for me. I took the S45 back and think I'll probably go with the S200 or S30. I've seen a lot of posts on ifish that endorse the S30 so I think I'll try my luck with that one.

RvW · 02-19-2003, 01:37 PM

I have a number of cameras but the one I seem to like best is my sony mav 2.3 with a 6X zoom

Ive had similar problems with poor print quality and have to say I really didnt find that megapixels had anything to do with the problems.

As I played around with the settings on my printer, all the different features on the camera, researched how digital zoom effects quality, the vast differences with light on dig vs film cams etc etc and have finally come up with all the right ingredients to produce amazing prints.
DPIs, exposure levels, image size all play a part in how your finished product will turn out...Ive managed some amazing 8.5x11 prints on high quality paper and a middle of the road printer (firewire or USBII) which actually look better than a developed prints shot with a $4000 carl zeiss lens, and higher MP cams too.
Experiment with both your camera and your printer reading all the info that came with both.
I'd even go as far as taking notes for different applications, dig cams are far from the "point and shoots" of the past.

Hope this helps.

Fish_N_Russ · 02-20-2003, 05:28 PM

I have a couple Nikon DigiCams and the reason I have them is because their lenses are some of the best you can get. That makes a LOT of difference as does megapixel size, but just note megapixels isnt the ONLY thing that affects picture quality. Some camera brands, like HP and Kodak are notorious for having high megapixels but take not very good pictures. :smile: