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Ripper
Member
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# Posted: 1 Dec 06 19:42
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Looking forward to seeing them MOMO, and thanks everyone else for your help and examples of pictures. You've been a great help.
:)
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M0M0
Member
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# Posted: 1 Dec 06 19:49
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Here they are
This pic has 4.1MP with the Kodak
And this is the same picture with my Nikon with 1.2 MegaPix. The difference is obvious.
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Ripper
Member
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# Posted: 1 Dec 06 19:52
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The first picture is clearly sharper, and is taken by the camera with the most pixels. So doesn't that contradict your point, and the amount of pixels does indeed matter?
My head hurts :(
:)
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Marcos
Moderator
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# Posted: 1 Dec 06 20:29
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Ripper, the firs picture is much more blured than the second one. The colours and contrast are different in each camera of course.
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Barry Miller
Member
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# Posted: 1 Dec 06 21:14 - Edited by: Barry Miller
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This is an excellent debate and one that brings out the different merits, or lack of them, and the comparison of equipment with different specifications. The question I ask myself is would I prefer a camera of greater pixels 'per se' to one with lesser pixels but with a much superior lens and more capabilities in general? Personally I would go for the medium pixels camera with the better lens and greater specifications. I think once we reach a certain pixel spec we may need to consider what is the better way to manipulate the pixels that we already have. A camera with a decent or better than average lens will often produce a image we can work with and manipulate to a greater degree to one produced with mega pixels but with lesser specification equipment. For the judgements and assessments to be fair the comparisons should be made with regard to equipment within the same class bracket and or price range.
I don't think we can compare fairly by lumping compact cameras, pro-sumer models and DSLRs all into the same bracket. The reason I say this is because I have seen low pixel images shot on high-end DSLRs that are sometimes superior in many aspects against an image of much greater pixels but shot on a lower end piece of kit. Many different people have different requirements from their gear and I suppose some of us are always going to be impressed by the aesthetics of some of the photo gear out there. For instance, am I allowed to say that I find the aesthetics of Long Lenses definitely sexy ? I know that is shallow and sad and also a "Male Thing" toys for boys and all that, but I am a mere male afterall lol.
I must add that there is now a limit in the number of pixels i would wish to drop to now that I have tasted the honey of an excess of 3mp and up to 6mp, so I suppose I am now spoilt a little.
Barry
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M0M0
Member
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# Posted: 2 Dec 06 06:26
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Barry, you are correct. In my humble opinion (I'm just an amateur) the lens is of far more significance then the camera. It's the same with cars and motorbikes. People stick to what they know and used off. I'm a Nikon man and will always buy Nikon.
However... shopping around might help a lot. The aperture of a lens is much more important for the quality of a photo then multi pixels. And if I buy a f2.8 Nikkor lens, they are the same price as the camera but if I have the same lens from Sigma... then they are a lot cheaper and still very good.
Shop around, investigate and look to these kinds of Forums. Although the're quite biased. I didn't like it when my wife bought a Canon. Still a nice camera though... and 4.1 MegaPixels but I would not change it with my Nikon's.
M0M0
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Barry Miller
Member
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# Posted: 2 Dec 06 12:49
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On a slight tangent here but I would like to ask Woophy members about another issue that is connected to this discussion and debate. Has anyone any experience with the specialist third party software that is available and claims to increase the number of pixels of an image which allows us enlarge photographs to virtually any size without any loss of quality. Dizzy and very boastful claims indeed, am I wise to be suspicious about such software or am I just an old sceptic? I did have a quick look at some software already mentioned in a reply by someone on Woophy, however, it did appear to be very expensive so I didn’t look to deeply into it.
I would be very interested to hear from anyone who has either tried this type of software or knows of someone who has had any experience of the software.
I apologise it this post appears to be hijacking the thread but it is all connected with pixels and image quality.
Barry
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M0M0
Member
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# Posted: 2 Dec 06 14:16
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I use an official version of ACDSee with RAW and that works fine for me.
However... if you save a picture on a certain compression, you cannot increase that to a higher level (only possible in the movies). That's why more and more pictures are now saved as RAW so they can be changed easily and after that compressed to (e.g.) JPEG.
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Barry Miller
Member
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# Posted: 2 Dec 06 14:55
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In reply to MOMO, which is a good point.
General viewing and imaging software is not really what I am referring to here. I may have mislead you with the term "increase the number of pixels" What the software claims to do is allow the photographer to increase the size of the finished image by enlarging it without the usual pixilation taking place, hence the image maintains almost all of its original quality, . This software costs up to £1000 (one thousand UK pounds) and does not actually increase the number of pixels it just appears to do so by reducing pixilation to almost zero. This is new state of the art software technology and is regardless of whether you use a lossy format or not, it can be used on either jpg. tiff or RAW files. However, it wont improve original quality it merely maintains it during certain image processing which can and often does reduce image quality drastically.
In truth the actual loss of quality when using a lossy format such as jpg under general conditions is really quite negligible when used for monitor or screen work in amateur photography, that is for anyone other than the purists. I personally think that there is often too much made of this image loss when using lossy files which, after experiments and comparisons really makes little difference on screen.
The downside of non lossy formats is the massive files that RAW and even TIFF produce and consequently the amount of space required to store them, this can be an issue for some people with limited image storage space. There is also the time factor involved when manipulating / processing / saving such large files. That is why jpg is a good compromise.
I agree that repeated manipulation and saving of a jpg file creates a quality loss in the final image but unless we are again looking at mega macro work is generally acceptable. However this loss of quality is compounded when the process is continually repeated every time the jpg is saved and will eventually reach an unacceptable level. But it was the software that maintains the quality when in increasing image size that I was really interested in knowing more information about. If it is as effective as claimed then it could be really useful with cameras using an average number of pixels.
Barry
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M0M0
Member
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# Posted: 2 Dec 06 15:04
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To my opinion, for somebody whom it is soooo important not to loose any quality of his/her very expensive digital camera and can't effort €100 for an extra 60GB harddisk... he/she should go back to C135 slides. I think for every normal amateur... RAW and JPEG works fine.
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