New A70 Need Help

[sbrady88]

Getting to know the camera and have 2 questions and 2 problems.
1. What is the DPI for the large, Medium 1, medium 2, and small resolution formats?
2. What does compression mean - superfine, fine, and normal? What should I use? Manual doesn't explain these topics very well.

Problems
1. I have the camera on large and superfine (the highest settings) and when I print the edges on objects are pixely. When I look at the photo on the computer at 100% it looks ok but I am printing it at 4x6 and then it looks strange and prints pixely. Is that a problem to print small (4x6) photos when it is on the large format for resolution.
2. Why can I not print 4x6s. Keeping the image proportional I can't change it to 4x6. Only 3x4. I have to make it bigger and crop it down to 4x6. Thanks.

[rothers]

1. DPI depends on your print size, simple math:

A70 set to large = 2048 x 1536 pixels

printed out at 6" x 4.5" gives:

2048/6 = 1536/4.5 = 341 DPI

You shouldn'd get pixely prints even at 10" x 8" with a 3Mbit image, are your sure your not re-sampling and reducing the resolution ?

2. The A70 like most digital cameras has a 4:3 aspect ratio

6 x 4 isn't 4:3 ratio so you need to crop, horizontally in this case.

[sbrady88]

The progam I was using must automatically resample the image. I was using Adobe Photo Deluxe Home Edition 3.0. Program is a joke. There is no way to change the setting.

I also used the software that came with the camera, PhotoImpression 4, and it is a joke too. You can only crop images to a maximum of 3x4. No 4x6, 5x7, or 8x10. You can use the auto crop but then it doesn't let you change the location of the crop. I also have HP photo & imaging where I can crop to 4x6 but it is difficult. But at least now using the impression and HP software the pics look great.

Thanks for the help. I will be getting some new software. What does everyone use, Photoshop?

[mike j]

I use Adobe Photoshop Elements and this works very well for cropping/resizing etc.

If you want to print out your photos, then it makes sense to take them on the higher settings. You then just need to crop them on the PC to the right ratio (6x4, 7x5 etc) and save them at as high a resolution as is possible/convenient.

jpeg's are a 'lossy' format so you want to do as little manipulation with them as possible.

[jrobert]

2. What does compression mean - superfine, fine, and normal? What should I use? Manual doesn't explain these topics very well.

Problems
1. I have the camera on large and superfine (the highest settings) and when I print the edges on objects are pixely. When I look at the photo on the computer at 100% it looks ok but I am printing it at 4x6 and then it looks strange and prints pixely. Is that a problem to print small (4x6) photos when it is on the large format for resolution.


Compression: The A70 doesn't offer a raw format (uncompressed) storage of images. It JPEG-compresses all images to some (user-selectable) degree, and with some consequent loss of information. 'Superfine', 'fine', and 'normal' is marketing-speak for image quality at various degress of compression.
Use the least compression you can afford, meaning the amount of storage card space used up by each picture. A raw image (if it could store one) would take almost 10Mb on the camera's storage card. Superfine typically takes 1.5Mb. Fine and normal take less (I don't use them so I don't know how much). The tradeoff for space-savings is the generation of artifacts in the image - what you see as pixelization near light/dark edges. It gets worse the more you compress.

Bottom line is use the largest storage card you can afford to buy; Use the least compression you can afford to store in the card(s) you have with you that day, and experiment with the different setttings to understand the trade-off so you can decide for yourself how good or bad it is for a given purpose.

-jeff-