Newbie question, pixels to prints............

[Gramps]

I am relatively new to digital photography. I have used an Olympus 620 for ebay pics etc. Now I purchased a non-current Minolta A1 at a bargain price. We are planning a trip to Europe and I am thinking I will do all photog. in dig. format. The thing I have not been able to find is some kind of comparrison between pixels and prints/ slides. I have been a 35mm photog all my life and am familiar with basic photography, But even in the owners manual that came with the camera, I cannot find a simple correlation between digital photo quality and print size.

I have available pixels of 2560X1920, 2080X1560, 1600X1200, 640X480. with resolutions of TIFF, fine, extra fine and standard.

What I'd like to know is how to correlate these settings with effectve resolution of prints. If I just wanted a good quality 4"x6" print what setting would be appropriate to that? 5X7', 8X10" etc.

I hope I have made myself clear. Please, ask me questions if I have not provided the info necessary to answer the question.

[Liz]

Are you doing the printing? Or having them printed. If you are doing the printing, I can't help you there - but I can make one comment.

I would use the highest or next highest resolution (pixels) to take the pictures. So, that would be either extra fine or fine. For 4x6 or 5x7 pictures, you might be able to do well with standard. The higher the resolution, the less pictures you will get per card. However, the quality of the images are better at higher resolutions.

If you are getting them printed (I use Walmart - less expensive and do a good job), the lab will figure it all out - you don't have to worry about resolution at that point. If you are doing the printing, that's another question - which I can't answer. Hope this helps a bit.

Liz

I am relatively new to digital photography. I have used an Olympus 620 for ebay pics etc. Now I purchased a non-current Minolta A1 at a bargain price. We are planning a trip to Europe and I am thinking I will do all photog. in dig. format. The thing I have not been able to find is some kind of comparrison between pixels and prints/ slides. I have been a 35mm photog all my life and am familiar with basic photography, But even in the owners manual that came with the camera, I cannot find a simple correlation between digital photo quality and print size.

I have available pixels of 2560X1920, 2080X1560, 1600X1200, 640X480. with resolutions of TIFF, fine, extra fine and standard.

What I'd like to know is how to correlate these settings with effectve resolution of prints. If I just wanted a good quality 4"x6" print what setting would be appropriate to that? 5X7', 8X10" etc.

I hope I have made myself clear. Please, ask me questions if I have not provided the info necessary to answer the question.

[Gramps]

Liz,

Anything I would want to print, I would take to a cam. shop, Walgreens, Wally World, or other similar establishment.

Your point is well made that more resolution is better, but I would still like to see some guidelines as to what kind of prints one might expect from different resolutions.

[Chunk]

I'd recommend taking some shots at all the different setting and having them printed yourself to judge. We can't know what is acceptable to you. I general, If you are not making extreme enlargements I'd recommend extra fine high resolution jpegs and you will be able to print some real nice shots in all the sizes you mention whare as if you use a poorer setting you may not be able to get good 8x10s.
Are you taking a computer or planning on putting the pics on cd along the way? Buy some large memory cards and use the higher settings. If you are not downloading the pics, you will need to use poorer settings in order to fit on more pics.
I'm in Wisconsin too. Do you have a Woodman's store nearby? I think their photo shops do a fine job with 20 cent 4x6s and less than $2.00 8x10s.

[Michael Fanelli]

Liz,

Anything I would want to print, I would take to a cam. shop, Walgreens, Wally World, or other similar establishment.

Your point is well made that more resolution is better, but I would still like to see some guidelines as to what kind of prints one might expect from different resolutions.

Each type of printer has an optimum pixels per inch that it would like to see on the incoming image. This number is sometimes hard to find. Epson inkjets used to optimize at 300 dpi, meaning 2400 x 3000 for an 8x10. The LightJet I had made years ago liked 400 dpi for the incoming image.

This does not mean that the original image needs to be this large. Any decent editing proram will do interpolation. Although interpolation leaves a bad taste in some people's mouths, it is an extremely powerful and effective way to mathematically increase the number of pixels. Scince uses this technique all the time. Just don't overdo it.

Always shoot at maximum camera resolution and the minimum amount of compression you can. This is, after all, your "negative."

[opus]

Here is a website that tells you the direct conversion formula of pixels to inches.

http://dx.sheridan.com/advisor/image_resolution.html

[Gramps]

Kellybean gets the prize. The website is pretty much what I had in mind. Just a rough guesstimate is all I was looking for.

[opus]

just remember, that formula is dependent on image resolution. So, a 72 dpi image at 900 x 600 pixels will work out to be a different "inch" size, than, say, a 180 dpi image at 900 x 600 pixels.

You'll need to find out what resolution your camera applies to TIFF, fine, extra fine and standard images.