Where are the BEST Point and Shoot Photos ?

On Thu, 22 Nov 2007 15:39:09 GMT, Pierot Alexander
wrote in
:

The quality of the lens being able to accurately divide the image details into
individual pixels is a great asset to needing less print resolution.

One of my early Fuji Finepix cameras qualifies for this, as well as having
taught me that. Its 1.2 MP images easily print to 10x8 prints. I've even printed
some from it to 14x11s with no problem. (given some minor post processing,
up-sample + Focus Magic)

If each pixel matters in the original image, then you have more leeway with them
when printed out.

This too shows much about people wanting more out of their printers and the
final print resolution than is necessary. It can mean only a couple things:
their photography isn't good enough to be carried in lower resolution (meaning
people would rather look for defects in their image than appreciate what the
photo is trying to convey), or their camera isn't capturing enough detail and
they're trying to make up for that in print. All in all it would reveal that
they make poor choices in general, in their equipment as well as their
photography subjects.

Well put.

--
Best regards,
John Navas
Panasonic DMC-FZ8 (and several others)

Scott W wrote:
David J Taylor wrote:
So how is it that images on my 13 x 10.5 inch display, with all of
1.3MP, appear perfectly sharp when viewed at 21 inches? Something
to do with the pixels being sharp?

G


Sharpness is a relative thing, put a 300 ppi print of the same image
next to your monitor and view under good light and all of a sudden the
monitor image will look pretty soft.

Scott

Quite possibly, but my printer doesn't do 13 x 10.5 inches, nor the 16 x
12 inches of may main 1.9MP display. Interesting how subjective it is,
though. Probably the different MTF of the display compared to the printer
has something to do with it.

Cheers,
David

John Navas wrote:
On Thu, 22 Nov 2007 04:51:48 +0000 (UTC), Peter Irwin
wrote in :

John Navas wrote:

Not unless you're Superman.

distance/3438 is one minute of arc.
This represents the minimum normal acuity for healthy
human vision. The limit the best eyes is twice that good.

You have the formula backwards,

Um, No.

I should have said:
"Viewing distance /3438 subtends one minute of arc",
Imprecise perhaps by using "is" when I should have written
"subtends", but hardly backwards.


and it actually represents typical vision under ordinary
conditions of daylight viewing. Normal indoor
light is worse.

I don't think so.
The chart on page 1638 of the Focal Encyclopedia of
Photography (1969 ed) is for a brightness of at least
10 foot-lamberts. This corresponds to an EV of 8.3
at ISO 100 - This is fairly bright for indoors, but
not unreasonable - I am actually in such an indoor
environment right now.


1.5 ? diagonal, which comes from authorities I've cited,
is actually conservative.

I certainly look at my 8x10 prints from about
a one foot distance. If I wasn't intending to look
at them that closely I could have saved money
by printing 5x7s instead. Your figure may be
about right for framed pictures on the wall,
but when I pass around prints people often look at
them fairly closely. If I have a mixture of prints
from 6x6 and 35mm in the box, people immediately
notice how much better the 6x6 ones look.

Peter.
--

On Thu, 22 Nov 2007 19:57:50 +0000 (UTC), Peter Irwin
wrote in :

John Navas wrote:

1.5 ? diagonal, which comes from authorities I've cited,
is actually conservative.

I certainly look at my 8x10 prints from about
a one foot distance. ...

Then you need to adjust accordingly for yourself,
and not presume to judge for everyone else.

--
Best regards,
John Navas
Panasonic DMC-FZ8 (and several others)

John Navas wrote:
On Thu, 22 Nov 2007 19:57:50 +0000 (UTC), Peter Irwin
wrote in :

John Navas wrote:

1.5 ? diagonal, which comes from authorities I've cited,
is actually conservative.

I certainly look at my 8x10 prints from about
a one foot distance. ...

Then you need to adjust accordingly for yourself,
and not presume to judge for everyone else.

Um, You are the one who is presuming to judge for everyone else.

I'm pointing out that my personal experience is that people
of my acquaintance including myself do look closely at largish
prints.

Peter.
--

In article , John Navas
wrote:

Luminous Landscape rocked the photo world years ago when it demonstrated
that digital 8x10 prints from the 3.1 MP Canon D30 were actually better
than prints from high-resolution scans of the best 35 mm film, proving
in the process that 3.1 MP is all that's needed for great 8x10 prints.

that claim was very controversial back then and discounted by numerous
people. it also depends on which film. roger clark's analysis shows
otherwise, with even 6 mp cameras better than some films and worse than
others:

http://www.clarkvision.com/imagedetail/film.vs.digital.summary1.html

On Thu, 22 Nov 2007 20:34:13 +0000 (UTC), Peter Irwin
wrote in :

John Navas wrote:
On Thu, 22 Nov 2007 19:57:50 +0000 (UTC), Peter Irwin
wrote in :

John Navas wrote:

1.5 ? diagonal, which comes from authorities I've cited,
is actually conservative.

I certainly look at my 8x10 prints from about
a one foot distance. ...

Then you need to adjust accordingly for yourself,
and not presume to judge for everyone else.

Um, You are the one who is presuming to judge for everyone else.

I'm actually just disproving invalid generalizations.

I'm pointing out that my personal experience is that people
of my acquaintance including myself do look closely at largish
prints.

I have no quibble with that.

--
Best regards,
John Navas
Panasonic DMC-FZ8 (and several others)

On Thu, 22 Nov 2007 13:03:55 -0800, nospam wrote
in :

In article , John Navas
wrote:

Luminous Landscape rocked the photo world years ago when it demonstrated
that digital 8x10 prints from the 3.1 MP Canon D30 were actually better
than prints from high-resolution scans of the best 35 mm film, proving
in the process that 3.1 MP is all that's needed for great 8x10 prints.

that claim was very controversial back then and discounted by numerous
people.

It's actually come to be widely accepted -- it can take time for people
to accept change, but real evidence has a tendency to eventually win out
over faith and supposition.

it also depends on which film.

The film used by Luminous Landscape was Provia 100F, "arguably the
finest grained, sharpest ISO 100 speed film available".

roger clark's analysis shows
otherwise, ...

Doesn't speak to the same issue, references Luminous Landscape, and
doesn't change the essential point of "3.1 MP being all that's needed
for great 8x10 prints".

--
Best regards,
John Navas
Panasonic DMC-FZ8 (and several others)

John Navas writes:

An 8x12 print under normal
viewing conditions and at normal viewing distance of 22" needs only 156
PPI for excellent results, which is only 3 MP. See
http://www.photokaboom.com/photography/learn/printing/resolution/1_which_resolution_print_size_viewing_distance.htm

There's a substantial flaw on that page!

The eye acuity page it refers to
http://www.scss.com.au/family/andrew/camera/resolution/#acuity gives
figures of 30 seconds of arc in good conditions, 1 minute of arc in
"ordinary" conditions, as the minimum separation between black lines on
a white background. That's one full cycle of the test pattern.

When converting from cycles to pixels, you have to consider how many
pixels it takes to create one black/white cycle. It takes 2 pixels as
an absolute minimum, but when you consider the effect of antialiasing
filters in real cameras you really need 2.5-3 pixels per cycle to
recreate the original pattern without aliasing artifacts at decent
contrast.

The page correctly calculates "inches per cycle of detail" and "cycles
of detail per inch", but then assumes that this is the same as "pixels
per inch" without allowing for the number of pixels needed to resolve a
cycle. And thus the number they come up with needs to be multiplied by
2.5 to 3 to get the correct answer. That's 400-500 PPI, not 156.

To use a different approach to the same question, Kodak says in one of
their publications that prints are generally acceptably sharp if they
resolve 4 lp/mm on the print, and critically sharp at 8 lp/mm. Assuming
we can resolve one line pair per 2.5 pixels, 4 lp/mm requires about 250
pixels/inch, while the "critically sharp" 8 lp/mm needs 500 PPI.

Dave

"David J Taylor" writes:
So how is it that images on my 13 x 10.5 inch display, with all of 1.3MP,
appear perfectly sharp when viewed at 21 inches? Something to do with the
pixels being sharp?

Your monitor has a pixel pitch of about 1/100 inch. Viewed from 21
inches away, each pixel subtends about 1.6 arcmin. The finest cyclic
pattern it can display is about 18 cycles per degree. Your eye's peak
sensitivity is somewhere around 10 cycles/degree, so an image that
resolves up to 18 cycles/degree is "pretty good".

On the other hand, your resolution limit is about 60 cycles/degree, so
if you gradually increased the resolution of your display from 100 PPI,
you would see some improvement in the image quality until you reached
somewhere above 300 PPI. And that's at 21 inches - up close, even more
PPI would give a visible difference.

Still, the quality of the image at 10 cycles/degree and below is a lot
more important than what happens in the 10-60 cycles/degree range.

Dave