I'll admit it, I crop, (I feel like I'm in an AA meeting). Often I
will compose a photo knowing I intend to crop from the beginning, some
subjects just scream out for a panoramic treatment, or square treatment,
as well as the reasons Bob listed
At 09:51 AM 2/11/2003 +0000, Bob wrote:
OK lets have a show of hands. Who here often finds they left just a
little too much space around their subject, either due to not framing as
well as possible or because you couldn't get close enough of enough
magnification. Who here sometimes takes a lanscape format portrait and
realises that they should have held the camera in portrait mode and
filled the frame?
I freely admit that I often and sometimes do these. Shooting planes at
Duxford or F1 cars at silverstone, my 300mm was not always enough, so I
applied extra magnification at the scanning stage. When taking family
shots, sometimes I get into a zone where I automatically take a shot
with the camera held in portrait mode and later realise that 2/3rds of
the picture is wasted, so crop into portrait mode.
This can mean that I need twice as many MP as my biggest print will
require to keep me happy. So that 11MP I might need for an 8*10
actually becomes 22MP for an 8*10 which has been cropped.
Give us a 22MP, 'non-bayer', full frame DSLR and this argument will stop
overnight - I guarantee it.
I am not saying todays camera arent good enough, but arguing how many MP
the camera needs to do average prints without taking into account the
fact that many prints are crops or zooms is only half the story. Sure
maybe I should improve my framing technique (it is getting better all
the time anyway) and maybe I should buy that FA* 600mm F5.6 - but I cant
do either easily and neither can a lot of the world.
My .2c
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Rob Brigham
> Sent: 11 February 2003 09:40
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: RE: Megapixels required for an 8X10 print?
>
>
> I seem to recall that different printers work at their
> optimum with different ppi images. Some prefer 360ppi to
> work at their best. 2880 *3600 = 10,368,000. So the Canon
> 1Ds would seem perfect for 8*10s on 'any' printer, until you
> want to crop and enlarge a section.
>
> Oh, and by the way - as is usually overlooked by digital
> shooters, the image supplied by the camera has already been
> interpolated by a bayer algorith and does not record true
> colour at each pixel, but merely averages out 4 adjacent
> pixels. So some Rezzing up has already been done - unless
> you shoot Sigma... This is why the 3MP Foveon is said to be
> as good as 6MP bayer by anyone who had tested it.
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Mike Johnston [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> >
> > It's pretty easy to figure out what size digital camera you
> > need for the best quality prints. Just multiply the size by
> > 300 dpi / 240 dpi, then multiply out the pixels needed.
> >
> > 300-dpi 8x10 = 2400 x 3000 = 7,200,000
> >
> > 240-dpi 8x10 = 1920 x 2400 = 4,608,000
> >
> > So you need a 7-mp camera for a top quality inkjet 8x10 and a
> > 4.5-mp camera for an adequate-quality 8x10. That's without
> > rezzing up, interpolating, anything. Note that some experts
> > say you can't tell the difference visually between a 300-dpi
> > print and a 240-dpi print. I have no opinion on that.
> >
> > This accords pretty well with my experiences, though. I get
> > very good 5x7s from my 3-mp camera and very good 8x10s from
> > my 5-mp Sony. The 3-mp can't go to 8x10 to my satisfaction
> > and the 5-mp can't go to 11x14.
> >
> > --Mike
> >
> >
>
>
Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend.
Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read. --Groucho Marx
