bondipom

2-3 mp will get a decent 6x4 print. I use a 4mp Canon as I sometimes crop and print on 8x6. I have found Canon lenses to be excellent. I don't mind the Nikons either. Canon also go on about their image processor which they claim improves image quality.

ABCDiamond

A good point about viewing them in the future. Who knows what we will be using to view the pictures in 2-5 years time. 2272x1704 may be a poor quality compared to what we have then

Carruss

I agree on both counts.

I cant believe that the camera is actually more expensive in Oz than here. I though it would be a bit cheaper.

The best site for one I have seen at the moment is www.pixmania.co.uk as it gives you a 2 year warranty as standard whereas all of the others only give a year! They also do some good bundles to as I may buy the extra lense and the battery grip to. You can actually arrange to go and collect all the kit from their place in London so at least you actually get to see someone unlike importing it from whoever from wherever and hoping it turns up only to have to pay duty on it ! ! !

I have got to decide soon though as I have a wedding coming up and want to make sure all works well etc. I am not a professional photographer at all and they have booked one but I would like to just catch some of the natural shots of the whole day.

R.

OzTennis

It is generally accepted that 300 pixels per inch is a reasonable compromise for printing photographs, which means at 2272x1704 you could print 7" x 5"
You can definitely print things bigger, it is all down to what quality you percieve as acceptable.

Regarding television, the standad that is in place for digital TV (which is the best compromise between size verses quality as determined by various professional bodies) is 720 x 576 for standard definition TV in australia. HD TV is of course higher.

I wouldn't recommend setting your camera to 720 x 576 because the quality is actually pretty low when printed or viewed on a typical 1024x786 setting for a computer monitor.

Hope that helps, it gives you some guidelines around which to play, but best to remember you may want to view your pictures in better quality in the future. A good quality digital image can look really spectacular.[/QUOTE]

Very handy comments thanks. I read somewhere (in relation to scanning where it is recommended that there is little point scanning at > 300 dpi) that the human eye can't really detect the difference between 300 dpi and anything higher. So you are saying if I want to print out 7" x 5" then 300 times that is 2,100 x 1,500 so the 2,272 x 1,704 is OK for printing (and probably 10" x 8" will be perfectly acceptable). Obviously it is OK for outputting to TV or monitor because the resolutions are much lower on both.

Together with the excellent recommendation of mymemory.co.uk (£17.99 for 512 Mb SD cards) that's the way I'll go - 2,272 x 1,704 fine will be good enough for my purposes and I'll make sure I have spare cards (to go with the fully charged spare battery). Just for the sake of the exercise I'll tinker with different resolutions, fine, normal, economy, TIFF etc.

It's a good point too about building a bit of 'future proofing' into current images because monitor and TV resolutions etc are bound to be higher in the future. I wouldn't want to look back at lots of my 'grainy' images.

Thanks again everyone.

OzTennis

bondipom

Very handy comments thanks. I read somewhere (in relation to scanning where it is recommended that there is little point scanning at > 300 dpi) that the human eye can't really detect the difference between 300 dpi and anything higher. So you are saying if I want to print out 7" x 5" then 300 times that is 2,100 x 1,500 so the 2,272 x 1,704 is OK for printing (and probably 10" x 8" will be perfectly acceptable). Obviously it is OK for outputting to TV or monitor because the resolutions are much lower on both.

Together with the excellent recommendation of mymemory.co.uk (£17.99 for 512 Mb SD cards) that's the way I'll go - 2,272 x 1,704 fine will be good enough for my purposes and I'll make sure I have spare cards (to go with the fully charged spare battery). Just for the sake of the exercise I'll tinker with different resolutions, fine, normal, economy, TIFF etc.

It's a good point too about building a bit of 'future proofing' into current images because monitor and TV resolutions etc are bound to be higher in the future. I wouldn't want to look back at lots of my 'grainy' images.

Thanks again everyone.

OzTennis [/QUOTE]
With scanning the output size is not necesarilly going to be the same as the scanned image therefore the output DPI will not be the same. I scan negatives at the highest dpi possible.

OzTennis

With scanning the output size is not necesarilly going to be the same as the scanned image therefore the output DPI will not be the same. I scan negatives at the highest dpi possible.[/QUOTE]

Thanks, so what about scanning 'traditional' photos (taken with a good compact 35mm camera)? I am about to scan all our old photo albums and store them as JPEG's - 300 dpi scan for them or higher? (storage space taken up vs quality is the obvious trade-off)

OzTennis

extrameant

Thanks, so what about scanning 'traditional' photos (taken with a good compact 35mm camera)? I am about to scan all our old photo albums and store them as JPEG's - 300 dpi scan for them or higher? (storage space taken up vs quality is the obvious trade-off)

OzTennis [/QUOTE]

There is a difference between PPI (pixels per inch) and DPI (dots per inch). DPI refers to the dots printed on paper. PPI refers to the number of digital samples of the image. You might print 300 DPI but is best to have higher (not lower) PPI than that or the edges could look more jagged than the printer is capable of. You can also get an effect called aliasing, so it is good to keep PPI higher than DPI. It does makes sense to sample negatives at high PPI because you want to print them bigger than the original negative size. If you are sampling an exisitng photo, I think you could get good results if you sample PPI at the same as you will print DPI (300PPi for example). Alternatively, you could sample much higher PPI than you will print DPI for best quality. However, if you sample at just a slightly different PPI to DPI (eg sample at 300PPI and print at 280DPI), then I think you will get aliasing (or Moire pattering). This is an effect similar to looking through two layers of fine net curtains.

What I have said is all theoretical (I am a broadcast engineer, not a photographer), and I am happy for anyone to say they get quite different results. It is all pretty complicated really. I don't have a printer suitable for photography, but when I get one, I will use a bit of trial and error to see what I find acceptable based round those guidlines. I am not sure how visible the aliasing will be, but it all comes back to what is accpetable to yourself.

ABCDiamond

I checked with http://www.teds.com.au The Camera People, on the pricing of this camera, and they were very helpful with this reply:

In Australia you can at this stage only buy 350D with a lens, The price you have mentioned looks to me like body only price, which you can buy in England.
I gather England probably is cheaper as the market would be a lot bigger than Australia based on population, so more units sold cheaper buy price. I worked out that 350D with a lens is 695 pounds, which works out at $1685.00 in Australia. So we are approx $100.00 more. The best price we could do at the moment would be $1739.00.
Remember that there is no international warranty on digital cameras. So a camera brought in England will not have G-tee in Australia

bondipom

If I remember rightly that is the case for SLRs. I believe Canon Compacts have an international warranty. I wouldn't say no to one of those 350Ds as my current EOS lenses should work with it.

extrameant

We just bought a minolta D7 dSLR and it came with an international warranty. Only had it a week but totally sold on the whole digital thing. It is so good to get instant results. The minolta is a great camera but there seems to be a quality control problem and a lot suffer from back focus issues. It was easy to do tests on a digital camera because of the instant results. We found this fault on the first camera, and also found how much better some of our lenses were than others which we had never noticed using film. I suppose you would need to be dedicated to fire off 70 photos on nothing but tests if you were using film, but no probs with digital (no processing costs).

We had to return our camera and the shop showed unbelievable incompetence and lack of knowledge, and denied our results and couldn't interpret their own tests. They said depth of field should run back from the focal plane, when everyone knows the rule of thumb about 1/3 in front 2/3rds behind.

We found the problem during the first day trials after noticing it in real photographs. A quick search on the internet showed there were a lot of people with this fault. Had to cause a real scene to get them to do anything about it. Unbelieveable. I guess a lot of shopkeepers must hate the internet and how easy it is to find about problems to see if you are the only one. They still deny there is a problem.

Carruss

Cheers for this but that price I quoted was for the camera and lense. You can get just the body for about £560-570 but as I do not have a lense I need the whole thing.

The price I quoted from above was with www.pixmania.com and they do some really good packages.

I will let you know the total cost including all the accessories when I have actually bought one.

R.

Andysue

Hi There,

One thing worth considering with cameras is that whether or not the maximum resolution is the sensor resolution. Many cameras (particularly cheaper ones) use software to "interpolate" the image to maximum resolution. So you could have a 3MP camera that acts as a 6MP camera as the camera "guesses" the additional pixels. This has the advantage of the picture not "pixellating" as quickly when you blow it up, but ultimately the picture is of no higher clarity, as half of it is "made up". I don't know the camera you are referring to, but if this is the case, then stick on the lower resolution until you take a shot you know you will want to enlarge significantly.

Andy

OzTennis

There is a difference between PPI (pixels per inch) and DPI (dots per inch). DPI refers to the dots printed on paper. PPI refers to the number of digital samples of the image. You might print 300 DPI but is best to have higher (not lower) PPI than that or the edges could look more jagged than the printer is capable of. You can also get an effect called aliasing, so it is good to keep PPI higher than DPI. It does makes sense to sample negatives at high PPI because you want to print them bigger than the original negative size. If you are sampling an exisitng photo, I think you could get good results if you sample PPI at the same as you will print DPI (300PPi for example). Alternatively, you could sample much higher PPI than you will print DPI for best quality. However, if you sample at just a slightly different PPI to DPI (eg sample at 300PPI and print at 280DPI), then I think you will get aliasing (or Moire pattering). This is an effect similar to looking through two layers of fine net curtains.

What I have said is all theoretical (I am a broadcast engineer, not a photographer), and I am happy for anyone to say they get quite different results. It is all pretty complicated really. I don't have a printer suitable for photography, but when I get one, I will use a bit of trial and error to see what I find acceptable based round those guidlines. I am not sure how visible the aliasing will be, but it all comes back to what is accpetable to yourself.[/QUOTE]

Ah, you might be able to help me! Sometimes when I scan 'commercial' photos such as postcards or pictures from calendars the scanned result has the 'looking through 2 layers of fine net curtains' effect (aliasing or Moire pattering as you call it). How do I prevent this? I am using Paint Shop Pro (6) and the advanced tools are auto correct, resize, lighten/darken, sharpen, colour adjustment, resolution. There is no mention of aliasing or Moire pattering in the help contents. Answers please on a postcard without the MP!

OzTennis

extrameant

Ah, you might be able to help me! Sometimes when I scan 'commercial' photos such as postcards or pictures from calendars the scanned result has the 'looking through 2 layers of fine net curtains' effect (aliasing or Moire pattering as you call it). How do I prevent this? I am using Paint Shop Pro (6) and the advanced tools are auto correct, resize, lighten/darken, sharpen, colour adjustment, resolution. There is no mention of aliasing or Moire pattering in the help contents. Answers please on a postcard without the MP!

OzTennis [/QUOTE]

Unfortunately, I haven't got a scanner either, so can't give you specific advice. We really need a printing professional to get a real answer.
Here's my opinion anyway. Moiré patterning is the name of the effect you see. It is caused by aliasing, which is a digital problem caused by sampling the picture at too low a PPI. You really need to sample by setting your PPI (resolution?) in the scanner to at least 2.2 x's the DPI of the existing commercial print to avoid that. I am not sure what the DPI of a postcard is, but I just had a look at one, and it is very fine indeed. You may not be able to set the PPI high enough but try setting as high as possible.
I think the reason you get this with commercial prints and not when scanning photographs is because commercial prints are made from lots of dots, where photographs and negatives are not.
I doubt if any software will be able to remove Moiré patterning once it is visible.
I think you may be able to reduce the effect of moiré patterning by setting the PPI of your scan to much lower than the DPI on the postcard, but then the result will not be as sharp.

Answers please on a postcard without the MP!

Not sure what you mean about MP, but here is an answer without the BS
Try changing the scanner resolution until you get an acceptable result... :0)

OzTennis

Unfortunately, I haven't got a scanner either, so can't give you specific advice. We really need a printing professional to get a real answer.
Here's my opinion anyway. Moiré patterning is the name of the effect you see. It is caused by aliasing, which is a digital problem caused by sampling the picture at too low a PPI. You really need to sample by setting your PPI (resolution?) in the scanner to at least 2.2 x's the DPI of the existing commercial print to avoid that. I am not sure what the DPI of a postcard is, but I just had a look at one, and it is very fine indeed. You may not be able to set the PPI high enough but try setting as high as possible.
I think the reason you get this with commercial prints and not when scanning photographs is because commercial prints are made from lots of dots, where photographs and negatives are not.
I doubt if any software will be able to remove Moiré patterning once it is visible.
I think you may be able to reduce the effect of moiré patterning by setting the PPI of your scan to much lower than the DPI on the postcard, but then the result will not be as sharp.

Answers please on a postcard without the MP!

Not sure what you mean about MP, but here is an answer without the BS
Try changing the scanner resolution until you get an acceptable result... :0)[/QUOTE]

Thanks a lot for that, I'll experiment with much higher resolution. MP was Moire Pattering BTW, answers on a postcard without the MP. I know what the BS is.

OzTennis