pixcels

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head clansman

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Martin
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hi all

My first post here except for my introduction to you all, It 's been many years now since I have done any serious photography since the seventy s when I used a Olympus om10 SLR which I phased out slowly when I bought my first digital camera when my kids were younger, due to running cost of film and printing. My first digital was only a cheap y but did produce some cracking photos I had a Toshiba pdr 3210 5.0mp which gave up the ghost last year, this now leaving me with only my Samsung g800 camera phone hmm not good 3.1mp.

anyway as I said not done a lot for a long time , times move on and things change considerable.

As you can see I have web pages/blogs which photograph quality wise are not good and has a lot of room for improvement, I am now looking to buy possibly two camera on for in the pocket a Panasonic lumix tz10 and the other not yet decided either a Nikon d50 or I'm tending to lean towards an OLYMPUS E420 with standard lens so I can use all my old zuiko OM lenses with an adapter ring.

When I use the camera phone and want to make any alteration to a photo it soon beings to show the pixels, this doesn't look good on any web page.

I don't really know how this pixel thing y really works is it simply the more pixel the better the picture quality meaning the more I can do with photos on the pc can someone please give me a pointer in the right direction, make it simple please, my thanks in advance to any replies to which all will be welcomed. :)hc
 
no the more pixels = better image quality equation is not true, it is true to a certain extent depending on sensors and stuff, very complicated to explain.

if you want to start in photography then any camera will do however you will see a bunch of 'buy canon' and 'buy nikon' comments which are loyalists so dont listen to them.

the best thing is to hold the cameras and see how they feel, here are some camera's worth trying out from all manufacturers;

canon - 450d/500d/550d
nikon - d5000
sony - a290/390 but try and go for the a500/550 if you can afford it
pentax - k-x
olympus - e420 and e620

hope this helps you.
 
It is complicated if you really go into it, but the whole pixels thing is largely a marketing led myth. For example, look at a magazine (not newspaper) which will probably be printed at 300dpi (dots per inch) and is generally reckoned to be a very high standard of reproduction. A full A4 page at 300dpi will have about 8.7m dots. Reduce that down to a 6x4in print and you only need 2.2m.

If it was only about pixels, we'd all be shooting on compacts that commonly go up to a claimed 14mp (even though the lenses do not have a hope in hell of ever getting anywhere near that level of resolution) but the clue to image quality is in the physical size of the sensor and when that is only the same as your little finger nail and has thousands of pixels crammed into an area the size of a pin head, it's not hard to guess that the light gathering potential (photons) at each photo site is not up to much.

For good image quality, you need every aspect of the whole imaging chain to perform to a high level, and that primarily means a (sufficiently) high number of large pixels and a lens that can deliver a good level of sharpness to all of them.

At the end of the day, since most manufacturers use sensors and lenses of broadly similar capability, the bigger the sensor, in terms of physical size, the better the image quality will be. Thus, compacts are better than camera phones, and DSLRs are better than compacts, and full frame DLRs are better than crop format DSLRs and medium format cameras are yet better still. And so it goes on.

In practical terms, what most people would regard as high image quality starts with the 4/3rds format (Olympus, Panasonic) and gets a bit better with crop format DSLRs and other cameras that use the so-called APS-C format (Nikon, Canon, Sony). That is usually plenty good enough for most people, and you certainly get a lot for your money in that area.

Above that sit full frame DSLRs but they carry a cost penalty, and a size/weight extra too.
 
Hi Martin.
My take on this pixies thing is that you probably don't need more than 8mp to get a decent A4, so pretty well any camera on the market today can give you that. The challenge is the smaller the chip, the less easy it is to get a good pic, so a camera phone with 8mp isn't going to give you as good a quality as a DSLR with 8mp. Other than that, sort out your budget. If you have mates with cameras, possibly getting the same make body will make it easier to swap and try out lenses. If that's not an option, just go for the best you can afford. Bodies date, good lenses tend not to. Just remember its the creative eye of the photographer that really counts.
 
Hi Martin,

You can also use your old OM lenses on a Canon DSLR (I do, adatper rings are available on e-bay for about £10-15). As far as I know they won't work on a Nikon due to Nikon using a mount with a shorter back focus distance.

Cheers,
Matt
 
nice thread but if you allow me to interupt i have a canon 40d and interested in what matt has just said about old OM lenses fitting into canon cameras would that apply to teleconverters as well i have a 2x ..what is the adapter ring? matt., i was going to sell the teleconverter on ebay, maybe not now........ again sorry for going off topic a bit ...thanks
 
hi again, the problem with your choice of camera (olympus) is as you say your not quite sure of digital yet that said you,ll learn quick on here. what i,d like to say is that when you put "old" lenses on a modern digital camera you will more than likely loose any auto focus the lens may have had,because the new lenses have electric contacts on them that drive the focus. also "i,ll get shot for this" olympus lenses while being excellent in quality are bloody expensive. so may be cheaper in the long run to change to canon or nikon.why? because although the other makes produce similar cameras the second hand market is full of the "big two" while you will struggle to find lots of the other makes. this keeps the price of canon and nikon lens reasonable in the second hand market. hth mike.........let battle commence :lol:
 
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hi mike Reading here , I am beginning to relies just how much learning I am going to have to do to decide on which way I will go on the choice of my second camera, but time will tell, In a few days I will have the new Panasonic tz10 to play with get to grip with that first, see what results I can get. Martin
 
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