Megapixelated or stinky macro capability?

[coogle]

Example from my last post.....

 

[Mo Sinister]

ThePolo:

 

I don't know if what you are using is a Mavica FD91, but here's a link I found discussing what sounds like could be your problem.

 

http://www.greenspun.com/com/imaging/PRODS/FD91/FD91A.HTM

 

It's possible you just aren't taking the photos with enough light (although it looks like you are in your pic). What is your current set up? Try "Reveal" light bulbs. They are about $3 for a pack of four and have good coloring.

 

Also, if you are using the zoom, don't. Digital zoom reduces sharpness and detail of an image. It's like taking the same picture (without zoom), and just blowing it up bigger. And we all know what happens to digital pics when we blow them up. Your camera probably has a combination of both optical and digital zoom.

 

Whereas I don't know much about taking photos, I know a fair amount about manipulating them on the PC. First of all, if the image comes out of the camera pixelated, no amount of manipulating the image in <insert your graphics program here> is going to bring back lost pixel information.

 

However, if your pictures go into the PC clean (good color or bad color makes no difference) and come out pixelated, you are probably compressing the image somewhere along the line.

 

Are you switching color modes (RGB to indexed color) while working the image? Are you saving them in super-compressed mode (often referred to as "quality." The lower the quality, the more compression is being used)? JPGs can be saved at a variety of compression ratios, which affects file size. Unfortunately, the more they are compressed, the more artifacting (the pixelated look) occurs. This could be an issue too.

 

Sheesh, sorry for the novel. I probably explained it badly to boot. Hope I helped. If all else fails, maybe your camera does stink.

 

~Mo

[claymoore]

It is a Canon EOS 300D. It has 6.5 megapixels. The main reason I went for this one though is, it is a proper SLR camera with real lenses that I can change. So when I can afford it I am getting a proper Macro Lens. (Would appreciate advice on which to get though).

 

Stuart

Some of these cameras have different names/numbers depending country of sale. I'm assuming that you have the equivilant of an EOS 60D since the 30D is only 3.3 megapixels. Canon has several excellent macro lenses. Remember that due to the size of the CMOS chip there will be a 1.5x magnigication of the focal length so the 50mm macro will behave like a 75mm. This may be helpful since the 100mm macros are about twice the price of the 50s. Even the aftermarket Tamron 90mm macro is $500 US. The Canon 50 is about $250 US.

Have you tried shooting any minis at high res with youir current lens and cropping? I do this a lot when I do not feel like getting out my 105 micro Nikkor and after cropping and resizing the images are high quality for web use. You will benefit from added depth of field with your lenses compared to consumer digital cameras like the DCS 717/Coolpix 4300 etc which only stop down to about F8. True macro lenses usually allow you to go down to F32 giving you a much better area of focus.

Have fun painting and shooting.

Clay

[mkh]

Correct me if I am wrong here. I purchased the coolpix 3100 which I believe is a 3.X megapixel camera. I love the thing. I had a fuji prior to that, which was a bit over what I needed. Anyways to the point. Is it not true that when using the camera for basically only posting to the the web that anything over 3MP is overkill? I understand that it gives you more to play with when cropping and such but when applying it to the web then most of the benefit of the higher end cameras is lost. ( I really am intelligent, just having a day where I cannot express what I am thinking). If you get the jist of what I am saying however, let me know.

[Kheprera]

Yup, pretty much. Basically all the higher MP means is you can make cleaner, clearer, and larger prints without them becoming or seeming pixelated.

 

Or so they say. Personally, IMO, most prints I've seen from digital cameras, when compared to film, aren't as clear. When shooting with 25-100 ASA/ISO film the image is going to be so crisp as to have virtually no discernable grain, and the film grain of negatives is a lot smaller than a pixel.

 

I've even had a hand printed, cropped 8x10 (image on the negative showed the entire horse while the image only showed the heads) from 400 speed B&W film blown up to 24x36 size (another negative was made of the picture then that image was blown up) without a discernible about of grain increase.

 

Besides, there's just cool stuff you can do with film that you can't do with digital, like turning it into a pinhole camera to get some "old-timey" style shots, working with color, infrared film and filters, and even manipulating the image through development to create unique effects. While some of these can be duplicated using a good photo editor, there's something about working in a dark room, the smell of chemicals, and watching the image emerge as if by magic that can't be duplicated...

 

Sorry, waxing nostalgic here. I'm a die-hard "give me a completely manual camera and screw all this digital and automatic stuff" kind of gal. Sure you get your pictures faster, but it's just not the same.

[mkh]

Besides, there's just cool stuff you can do with film that you can't do with digital, like turning it into a pinhole camera to get some "old-timey" style shots, working with color, infrared film and filters, and even manipulating the image through development to create unique effects. While some of these can be duplicated using a good photo editor, there's something about working in a dark room, the smell of chemicals, and watching the image emerge as if by magic that can't be duplicated..

 

Oh I whole heartedly agree. Want to talk wax nostalgic, if I could sell or display a mini in B&W, I would. (matter of fact my coolpix allows me to shoot in that mode...how cool is that.) I love the grey tone feel of B&W film, it seems more lifelike than color any day. I too spent a good amount of my grey matter, and time in my old high school photo classes...sniffle. Thanks for the info.

[Spike]

Oh I'm gonna be bothering some of you ALOT with my questions about my new digi! ;)

 

I just got an Olympus C-5000 Zoom and have just only begun to tinker around with all its capabilities and with the photo-editing program that it came with.

 

I made this one without too much effort

 

Now I have the ability to lower the camera's pixel resolution to as low as 640X400, but at that point, the pictures taken using the macro feature still want to be ever-so-slightly pixelated.. but not too badly.

 

What's troubling me is how I should go about converting my big huge crisp close-ups of his miniatures into relatively crisp but much smaller-filesize thumbnail pics. I can use cropping and resizing to compose a very nice thumbnail, but I still think I sacrifice too much quality..even for a thumbnail.

 

I suppose what I need is advice on photo-editing programs. What's good..what's affordable, and what's DUMMY-PROOF? :)