URGENT - Camera Megapixels and File Size

meester

espresso wrote: »

Fuji finepix a405 is a 2M pixel camera. It should produce a picture with 1200 x 1600 pixels when on the correct settings (filesize approx 1MB). It sounds like you took these pictures on a lower setting if they are only 458KB filesize.

totally wrong, please read my earlier post.

meester

BungleGirl wrote: »

My camera is a fuji finepix a405 - I must be doing something wrong!

This is what I did:-

Downloaded them to computer - this done via finepix viewer, deleted them from camera when downloaded (have a horrible feeling that might have been a bad move!)

In finepix viewer if I go to check file size (using one photo as an example) it says Size 445KB (445,682 bytes) Size on Disk 448KB (458,752 bytes) this is the same if I change what it 'opens with' to internet explorer.

That is plenty good enough. If you want to make it bigger, save it as a gif, it will be instantly over 1mb.

espresso

meester wrote: »

totally wrong, please read my earlier post.

You obviously know very little about digital cameras, resolution, pixels, etc, proven by this statement!

meester wrote:

That is plenty good enough. If you want to make it bigger, save it as a gif, it will be instantly over 1mb.

:rotfl:

wonka

I'm afraid GIF files are not suitable for storing digital photographs - the GIF format was introduced primarily to store computer graphics. This is because a GIF has a limited "palette" - i.e. the number of different colours that need to be displayed.

Conversely, JPG files, or TIFF files are able to store millions of different colours, so to increase a JPG to over 1MB you would convert to TIFF. This seems pointless though, as it won't improve the quality of the photograph, it will merely decompress the content.

2M pixels on a fuji finepix is actually not too bad. It's easy to get fixated on megapixels when the optics are just as important.

I will stick my neck out and say that the OP's photograph is probably good enough quality to appear in a leaflet, assuming she used the high quality settings on the camera, and assuming the photograph will be no bigger than A6 size.

boyse7en

I think everyone is getting confused here

In no particular order :-
GIF format is unsuitable representing photographic images in either electonic or printed form, so forget about it completely.

The guy doing the work should not request an image by stored size (i.e. the number of bytes or Mb it takes up on disc) as this does not give any more than an indication that the image may be of sufficient size or quality.
He should request an image size specified in pixels (eg. 2048 x 1536 pixels) or if he wants you to do the math, he could give you the printed dimension (e.g. 10cm x 7cm) and the target resolution (for magazines, normally 300ppi)

If your software gives you control over the compression level, always use the highest quality / lowest compression setting possible. Lowering the quality does reduce the file size (useful for emailing images for on-screen viewing) but creates compression artifacts that reduce the quality, and they can be often seen when printed.

wonka

Here is a sample from a Fuji Finepix A405. It's only a 640 x 480 picture (110K), but I would assume a picture taken at 1600 x 1200 would be even better quality?

BungleGirl

Thank you to everyone for their replies. As it is important that the leaflet goes out and the deadline is midnight tonight I decided to follow the instructions to the word and send a photo where the file size is just over 1MB - I would be in so much trouble if they refused the photo because I did it wrong and the leaflet didn't go out!

My friend came round with her 6.1 megapixel camera and all was fine - interestingly even with that set to 'highest quality' the file size was only just over 1MB, but I got what I needed so it doesn't really matter.

I have learnt more from your replies than I have since my first step into digital camera ownership - I shall store it in my memory for an occasion when I might relay the information to someone else and sound like I know what I'm talking about!

ormus

im sure they really meant 1mp and not 1mb.
my old sony fd200 will take a 1mp and or a 1mb photo easily. it has various settings for quality v storage space.
check out the settings on your camera.