> ----------
> From:         Clark Martin
> Reply To:     PowerBooks
> Sent:         Sunday, May 5, 2002 10:31 PM
> To:   [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject:      Re: 5300 and digital photography
> 
> I'm using my PB5300c with my digital camera.  Mainly I plan on using 
> it for downloading the SmartMedia card to the laptop's harddisk, 
> particularly while on vacation.  A one day outing has yet to fill up 
> the SmartMedia card.  I also want to use it to review shots I've 
> taken.  One thing I know I WON'T be doing is stitching together 
> panorama shots (too slow and not enough memory).
> 
> 
One thing to keep in mind is resolution (pixels) is everything if you plan on having 
prints made later.  If you're just posting the images on a web page then a lot of 
digital cameras will do just fine but for good, photographic quality prints, you need 
pixels and lots of them.  So if you have the option to set your camera to a higher 
resolution, do so if you think you might want some photographic quality prints made 
later.  Resolution is the total number of pixels in the image file.  High-end digital 
photographic quality printers need 300-400 dpi (pixels per inch) so if you're wanting 
a good 8x10 made then you need to have 3000 to 4000 pixels in the 10 inch dimension.  
Few digital cameras have this kind of resolution.  Yes you can enlarge it in Photoshop 
and it does a reasonable job interpolating pixels but there's no substitute for 
capturing the image with the number of pixels you need.

Now if you're just printing them out on a desktop inkjet printer with photo paper, you 
can probably get by with far fewer pixels.  Probably somewhere in the neighborhood of 
150-200 dpi.

JPEG compression is also something to be aware of and it's not directly related to 
resolution.  You can have a very high resolution file (lots of pixels) and then ruin 
it by compressing the snot out of it.  JPEGs compress an image by throwing away data 
from the image file which then has to be reconstructed when the file is opened and 
printed.  The more compression, the less quality.  The more quality, the less 
compression.  Check your digital camera files.  When setting some digital cameras to a 
higher resolution, they don't capture with more pixels but instead only adjust how 
much compression the image gets.

Keep in mind that if you have more pixels and less compression, your image file is 
going to be larger and you will fill up that compact flash much faster forcing you to 
download them to your computer.

 ------------------------------------------------
 Tom Roth  *  [EMAIL PROTECTED]  *  tel 336.716.4493
 Wake Forest University School of Medicine
 Dept of Biomedical Communications
 Medical Center Blvd  *  Winston-Salem, NC 27157-1011
 http://www.wfubmc.edu/biomed/


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