There is nothing wrong with a 4 mp camera but it certainly has
limitations. for instance Photoshop indicates that 4 mp will reproduce
a final image of about 4" x 6" in 'high quality' or 240ppi which is
needed for typical magazine work. Most photos in magazines are about
that size and there are programs to stretch that a bit. Indeed I
photographed a bunch of vintage cars a few years ago where we ended up
with images about life size--meaning about 24 ft long for a Caddy.
Obviously these were used for display purposes. I also did the side of
a 18 wheeleer which was about 50 ft.
If you want to see the other end of the spectrum dig out a past issue of
the Dispatch during the year the convention was being held in San Jose
along with the NMRA. The coveer shot is very much pixelated and
probably shouldn't have been used that large. In the early daze of
digital there was a lot of that going on. My first digital was a Fuji
S-1 which was a 3 mp camera but Fuji did some fancy work to make it act
like a 6 mp camera. My next camera was a S-2 which was actually a 6 mp
but was tweaked to act like 12mp.
What makes depth of field so good with the smaller cameras is the small
sensor size. In the old daze of shooting 8 x 10 film we generally used
F45 to get reasonable depth of field with F64 or even F90 in extreme
cases. So a sub sensor size will do a similar job at F11 or so. I have
three digital camera one is a Leaf back that is 6mp that fits a medium
format camera that stays in the studio and is attached to a
computer--it's nearly antique age but works fine. It's sensor is full
frame 35 mm or 24 x 36. The problem is that it's difficult to do wide
angle work with it; likewise the typical subminiature camera generally
has a 24-28mm length for it's widest setting--not really wide at all for
that size of sensor! With the Leaf, I shoot three exposures and blend
them together to make one panoramic image, by using a 50 mm lens. This
way I can make up a image like it was shot with a 25 mm lens on a 35 mm
camera. It's combined image size is about 14mp. I use this camera
setup for most of the work I do for Remember the Rock magazine which
often goes full page or larger. They appreciate the final files
delivered in the higher quality TIFF format in 16 bit.
My other cameras are a DX sized Nikon and a full frame (FX) Nikon 700.
With this combination I can go from 12 mm to about 650 mm super long
telephoto with the combination of lenses and sensor sizes. Again I
generally deliver images in the TIFF file format, so if need be they can
tweak the image for their presses. If it's a low end client, as they
request JEPG's I certainly will deliver them that way but the
compression that happens sometimes will create artifacts that degrade
the image.
Anyway that's the way I work.
Bob Werre
BobWphoto.com
>
>
> All --
>
> Interesting discussion started by String-Bob. I take all my own
> photographs for
> articles I've had published. Over the last eight years, all have been
> taken
> with a Sony CD-400 4.1 megapixel camera. My lens is a Zeiss optical zoom
> (standard with this camera). I get amazing depth of field by mounting
> my camera
> on a tripod, setting the control on "aperture" (smallest lens opening,
> camera's
> computer chooses the exposure time), and using an electronic cable
> release.
> Image is written directly on a minidisk in JPEG format. As yet, no
> magazine has
> rejected my photos as being too coarse or too fuzzy.
>
> Dick Karnes
>
> [N
>
>
>
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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