Picture Quality

[dtabor]

Please pardon my lack of knowledge on this subject. I am finally ready to purchase a digital camera. Up until know I've had SLR and an Olympus Stylus Zoom. I have seen digital pictures printed on a photo printer that are extremely easy to tell that they are digital and not 35mm simply because the look "painted" for lack of a better description.

Someone told me that if I were to have the pictures from a digital camera developed at a processing place, I wouldnt be able to tell the difference between them and a 35mm picture.

So, my question is this, is the statement above true and second, to get the same quality of picture as my Stylus, what camera, megapixels etc would I need to get? 99 percent of my photos are of the 4x6 standard variety. Sometimes as gifts they may jump to 5x7 or 8x10.

Thanks for letting me tap your knowledge!

D

[Canuck]

Please pardon my lack of knowledge on this subject. I am finally ready to purchase a digital camera. Up until know I've had SLR and an Olympus Stylus Zoom. I have seen digital pictures printed on a photo printer that are extremely easy to tell that they are digital and not 35mm simply because the look "painted" for lack of a better description.

Someone told me that if I were to have the pictures from a digital camera developed at a processing place, I wouldnt be able to tell the difference between them and a 35mm picture.

So, my question is this, is the statement above true and second, to get the same quality of picture as my Stylus, what camera, megapixels etc would I need to get? 99 percent of my photos are of the 4x6 standard variety. Sometimes as gifts they may jump to 5x7 or 8x10.

Thanks for letting me tap your knowledge!

D

I think you'd do fine with a 4-5 MP digital camera, like the A95, or Powershot S500 ought to do you good for that. I have a 10D (6.3MP) and lenses to go with it.

[Moppie]

I just had two 8x10s printed which I gave to my parents as x-mas presents.
Looking at them there is nothing to tell them apart from photos taken with an expensive film SLR instead of my P&S A80.
Even the guy at the photo shop who printed them was impressed.

[Belmondo]

Up to about 8 X 10", a 4 or 5 megapizel image on a decent printer will be indistinguishable from your typical film-based print. Whatever you saw that looked 'painted' might have been a very low resolution image, or possibly was produced on an older or malfunctioning printer.

I currently produce 13 X 19" images from my 8 megapixel camera on an inkjet printer that are stunning. (in my humble opinion)http://photography-on-the.net/forum/images/smilies/icon_wink.gif

If the largest image you ever produced was 5 X 7", a 3 megapixel camera would be fine for what you have in mind.