Digital Cameras and your Images

Resolution

The benchmark resolution you'll need for good photo-quality prints from a digital file is 300 dpi, you'll need 300 pixels for every inch of output in both the vertical and horizontal directions. So, for a 4x6-inch print, you'll need an image file of 1200 x 1800 pixels taken with a 2-megapixel (Mp) camera.

To make a 5x7-inch print, you'll need an image file with a resolution of 1500 x 2100 pixels.
Now, multiplying those two numbers gives you the resolution you'll need from your digital camera: 1500 x 2100 = 3,150,000 pixels, or 3.15-megapixel. A high-resolution 4 or 5 megapixel camera will produce high-quality 5x7 or 8x10-inch prints.

Saving Digital images

JPEG is one of the most popular image file formats and includes a powerful compression method. Unfortunately the compression used loses some detail in the pictures, on most cameras, these differences are hard to spot.
As a rough guideline, a compressed JPEG file size of approximately 500 KB per photo will enable you to output a good quality 8" x 10" photographic print.

In general, you should choose JPEG where speed and smaller file sizes are important. TIFF is a common format for exchanging images, but has little real use on a camera, where a high quality JPEG mode gives virtually identical results at perhaps a quarter of the file size.

RAW (if your camera allows it) where quality is important Raw image formats allow you to save all the original data, which can then be processed later. Raw format is rather like a negative in a film camera.

The raw file size of a 4x6 image (uncompressed) is about 6 megabytes (MB).

Tiff files are usually large and soon fill up storage cards.

Storage

Current digital cameras use a variety of different storage media. This determines how many pictures you can store (resolution dependent). Most cameras include a portion of internal memory and some manufacturers bundle a small capacity memory card. Buying more storage can cost from around £10 upwards. Current digital cameras can use one type of storage and are generally not interchangeable (i.e. SmartMedia is not compatible with CompactFlash), each storage media offers a variety of storage sizes from 8MB up to 1GB

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