What MegaPixel rating would be good enough for most Webpage work and still give acceptable small prints to send to prospectives?

ckknives

For web use 72 is the resolution to use for small photos 125 should do the trick. (4x6 would be a small photo)

How do these numbers tanslate to digital megapixel ratings commonly found on digital cameras?

ckknives

First of all megapixels mean 1 million pixels. 72 pixels which are good for pics sent on the web do not have much to do with megapixels. A lot of terms in photography are very confusing 72 pixels are the resolution for your web pictures. Higher numbers of pixels are for printing and more than a resolution of 300 are about the limit unless you have some super duper equipment and then you would be giving me advice.
Steve Korn

Steve

I am unclear on what the 72 pixels mean. Is it a measure of the resolution in some unit of the CCD the digital camera uses to capture the image file? I used megapixels as a guide because in most specifications this number is used as a guide to some purported image quality and in comparison between cameras. I know that final image quality depends on graphic format (JPEG, TIFF, BMP, MIC,etc,...) and compression used to obtain the final image file.

I also know that in film photography, this is not a simple question either. In film based imaging, resolution is based on a number of factors. Film speed, film type, film size, lens resolution, exposure, camera steadyness and image enlargement all play a role in determining resolution with film.

I was just curious what your recommendation would be for an acceptable digital camera for web use and in small prints for prospective customers. Sorry if I seem so confused. I appreciate all the time you have taken so far to help me understand. Thanks.

ckknives

Click on my banner at the bottom of this post, and look at the knife and shop pictures on my web site. They were all taken with a 2 megapixel camera. I am able to do 8x10 color prints of those same pix with quite acceptable quality.

The images I start with (and from which I make prints) are much higher resolution than the ones I use on the web, but they all come from a single exposure with a digital camera.

CK Knives, The megapixels are the power of a digital camera or their capture ability the higher the number of pixels the larger the picture they can produce. I would recommend for small pics somewhere around two megapixels. Maybe an Olympus or a Canon, but I don't know how much control you will have for depth of field as I haven't used any of these cameras except one time and I was quite surprised with the good results. Knives are not easy to capture well.
Thank you,
Steve Korn

Hi Don, Thank you for showing what can be done with a 2 megapixel camera. My only comment is the pictures on the plain backgrounds look better to me because nothing takes away from the knives. Also how did you light these pictures and which camera did you use?
Thank you,
Steve Korn

Steve, it's an Olympus C-2000 Z. I just used available light (fluorescent) for most of the shots, and set up some with a white sheet for a reflective surface.

Don, don't forget, those have been compressed and resized a little from our side. The one's you sent originally were very clean and sharp, even at the 60% compression.

If you take a super high resolution image with that camera, how large is the raw file? What format?

Alex

TIFF format, and I can get 6 exposures. Hi-res JPG, I can get 64; lower res JPG, a couple hundred on the 30 MB flash memory card.

that 72 and 300 are we talking pixels or dpi ?

I'm confused <img src=http://www.ezboard.com/intl/aenglish/images/emoticons/ohwell.gif ALT=":\">

The 72 would be 72 ppi (pixels per inch). That's considered by many to be about the right resolution for computer display. This has nothing to do with the x/y coordinates. It should be mentioned that the supposed nominal resolution for a Mac is 72 ppi, while the supposed nominal resolution for a PC is 96 ppi. I have sort of tried to avoid this thread because this stuff does get pretty deep.

Here's a link to a good article that explains what all this mess is about:

<a href=http://graphicdesign.miningco.com/arts/graphicdesign/library/weekly/aa070998.htm>DPI, SPI, LPI, and PPI</a>

And if you need more:

<a href=http://nilbs.com/techbabl/dpi_ultim.htm>The Ultimate Truth about Resolution, DPI, and PPI</a>

Cha Ching! :smokin:

Alex