Pixel setting on camera?

nicks

If I want good quality 6" x 4" or 5" x 7" photos printed - what is the best pixel setting to have my camera on? Don't want to spoil the image quality of having to re-size before getting them printed.

Thanks

Nickx

11gardir

The maximum.
End of story.
If you have an OK card it will be perfectly ample in size to hold plenty. If you are getting them printed
, don't worry about the resizing, it will all be sorted about by the machine/person.

nicks

Ok, thanks. I wasn't sure if resizing them altered the quality of them...

Nicks

shadowdragon

it would if you used a very low resolution and increased the size you would get some loss of quality but I have an 3 year old 6.3megapixel camera and it takes excellent quality pictures even larger than 6x4 and always use the maximum resolution and can take a hundred or more photos on my SDCARD

nicks

Thanks Shadowdragon....

DwainDibley

I think anything over 2 or so megapixels would be fine, maximum would mean bigger filesizes but more image data captured.

As far as I know anything under 4 megapixels is fine for printing up to A4.

Marty999

I have an old Canon Ixus and this can only handle up to 3.2 megapixels, but this is fine for prints up to A4. If printing at 6x4" you could set your camera to 2 MP and you would not lose quality. Don't be misled into thinking that the more pixels you have the better your prints will be, you only need more pixels if printing at large sizes (over A4), or wish to enlarge a small portion of an image. It is more important to have a good quality lens than to have lots of mega pixels.

coolagarry

I agree that the vast majority would not notice a quality difference over about 2 megapixels. However as others have stated there is normally plenty of room on a memory card for very big files.
That has the additional advantage that you can crop the picture and still get something decent when printed at 6 x 4. If you started with a small file then the cropped pic would be poor.

isofa

For a good quality print at 7x5 you'd need an image of approx 1400 x 1000 pixels (that's at 200dpi - a resolution which most commercial printers will output photos, or possibly lower - depends on the process and the company). At 300dpi you'd need 2000 x 1500 - however this all depends on the printing processes used.

People get very confused about resolution and dpi. Remember to print colours, or greyscale, images are dithered or screened, using 4 (or sometimes 6) basic colour inks, very finely. If every "dot" of an image was printed at 300dpi, it'd just be black because every full dot would be full of ink, and no tones would be visible.

Dye-sublimation printers output at a much lower dpi than inkjet printers, yet produce photographs virtually indistinguishable from a normal photographic process, whereas, an inkjet will never fool a professional!

Never enlarge a photographic image e.g. take a 800 x 600 pixel image and enlarge to 1600 x 1200, because you cannot introduce detail that isn't there in the first place. It'll just increase the number of pixels, but result in a blurry or pixellated result, depending on how it was enlarged.
Only ever crop down to the area you want.

On a separate note, I'm with Marty, if you are buying a camera, don't worry about the "mega-pixels" it;s just a marketing ploy. Top notch lens will make much more difference. A 6 megapixel camera with a quality lens will take infinitely better photos than a 10 megapixel camera with a cheap lens.

shadowdragon

while we have some knowledgeble people could you cast your eyes over this and tell me how it compares to a inkjet in the picture printing department?

http://www.samsung.com/hk_en/consumer/detail/features.do?group=printersmultifunction&type=printersmultifunction&subtype=colorlaserprinters&model_cd=CLP-310/XSS

I recently bought it, but I have noticed you can only use bog standard paper in it (i did think I knackered it as I shoved some high gramme matt paper through as a test and it got jammed!!!). And how would it compare to taking your photos to be printed at the machines in ASDA/TESCO.

BTW I like it for general printing and was only 100quid at staples, and more economical for general letter printing ect and came with good starter toner.

totalsolutions

Photographs are "continous tone" and do not use "dots" or the phrase "dpi". The colours are solid. Look through a loupe.