Digital camera effective resolution

For Christmas, my "main" present, i.e. the expensive present from my dad, is a load of money towards getting myself a digital camera. I've thought about splashing out and getting a digital SLR, but to be honest I don't need one. So, compact it is.

Being a lover of Sony equipment (although not a full-blown Sony Zealot: I think PlayStation sucks ), I would like to get a Sony camera. There is a technical reason for this: whilst Memory Sticks are expensive compared to generic chunks of flash memory, I have a Sony Vaio VGF-AP1L. This is a 40GB personal media player that allows you to connect up a Sony Cybershot camera and download the picture files onto the hard-drive. Means I effectively have my "offline" storage for holiday snaps: just stick them on the drive at the end of each day. Only works with Sony cameras though. Plus my experiences have always been that Sony stuff is worth the small extra expenditure. I'm sure that such a statement will entice all sorts of flaming, but that's just my experience! I've never been disappointed with a piece of Sony equipment, and it always seems to be built to last.

Now, I notice that all the Sony cameras list the "effective" pixels. Why?! I want to compare like with like! Short of downloading ALL the specs for EVERY camera to see which sensor it uses, I'm not sure if I am comparing 7.2 MP effective resolution from Sony with 7.2MP ACTUAL resolution from brand X, or comparing it with another EFFECTIVE resolution.

Does anyone know what "effective" resolution is?! Do all manufacturers quote "effective" resolution (i.e. Sony are being honest but others are trying to hide it) or are there actually good-quality 7.2 and 8.1MP sensors out there for cameras in the £300-range?

If anyone says to get an EOS-350 I'll blow a big raspberry at them

I suggest you get an EOS-350.

Adam although Sony have always had a great name well deserved for hi-fi etc as regards cameras they have been left far behind.

Canon are streaks ahead of the others and i am not sure wht your effective pixels are but a manufacturer could be Sony did bring out a professional slr to compete with Canon and Nikon where the camera claimed to be an effective 12.? megapixal but in reality it was only a 6.? megapixel and their camera fell by the wayside and got forgotton, as the technology they used was left behind with the sensors they have today, infact i am sure now it was Sony who tried this.

The cameras being raved about now which keep their resale value are all Canon--1ds mk11--1d mk11--5d--20d--350d etc etc.

An slr is far superior to a compact anyday as you can change things but for £300 i dont think you will be anywhere near a 350d unless you add a few more hundred to it, but look at the IXUS Canon compacts and see what you think, these also have a very good right up.

By the way unless you are printing large photo's above A4, pixels dont mean a thing and 3-4 megapixels is plenty for 5"x7" pics cause you cant tell the difference at that size.

Do you need a new phone ?
http://www.carphonewarehouse.com/co...OFFER&bbcam=adwds&bbkid=sony+ericsson+k750i&x

depends what you want from a camera but you only have so many pockets, I'm looking at this phone/camera, I,ve got big cameras for work but like to carry one round with me incase someting pops up! like yesterday I had a helicoper land at the end of my garden ,whipped out my phone and got this picture but its a crap camera which is why I'm looking at this one. and their getting better.



there are loads of sites that offer good independant advice.

richardp, i have that phone, it takes truly cracking pictures in the daytime outside. I mean, it takes bigger pictures than my 6MP camera! obviously some digi enhancement, and not as great quality, but still excellent pics for a cameraphone!

One niggle: it sometimes forgets it has the memory card inserted, but it only seems to happen when you turn your computer off with the phone still attached to it (it also charges from the USB port)

Good flashlight (2 white LEDs), also used as a torch, not so good performance at night as a camera. Digital zoom like any other: awful. The MP3 player only plays MP3 files, not WMAs, so dont expect much of it if you have a computer full of WMAs

Oh, it also makes phone calls.

I remember when Sony used to make digi cameras with floppy drives! I remember using one and it only held about 15 pics! I cant see now how it held that many on 1.4MB discs, but i suppose the pics were smaller! My casio has a 512MB memory card it can hold about 500 pics!

EDIT: got bored: here are some samples of sony erricson photos, unfortunately they are of my wrecked car, but im sure you will agree the quality is fantastic for a camera phone! Click the picture when it loads for the full-size.

oilman said:

I suggest you get an EOS-350.

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Is it any good?

What's the body made of?

now i wonder who that is a dig about?

anyway, my 2p worth

I think we (the public) are being conned into


buy this camera as it has 345 million megapixels (ok so i am exagerating a bit)

but my point is this:

i used to have a 1M camera it took perfectly good pictures, i now have a (not sure how many but its about 3 or 4 m mp) but i only got it becuse I broke the other one i had (my fault) and this was the nearest equivilant and it was 1/2 price of the other one (not the 1m one)
but even with the 1m camera i have to digitaly shrink the pictures (paint shop pro) to make them fast to download on the net (for people with dial up)

so as has been said, why get an umpteen million pixel camera if at the end of the day you are either going to email them to f & f or just print them.

for pro photographers taking pictures that will become billboard size, i agree, but for the likes of joe public, i see no point in spending lots of dosh for an umpteen mega pixel cameraa, so i think we are all being conned if you buy one, just because its got loads of m pixels

crafty I'd like to see a landscape picture from that phone on a bright day, the pic,s although good for a phonecam, are abit dark and grainy.
happy boxing day guys, cold turkey anyone?

I have a little 5 Mp Olympus Camedia C-50-50 Zoom ... Not SLR, well out of date now from mid 2003, over £500 then with extras, bristles, as they do, with bells and whistles

Extremely wide range of manual and parameter control, a shutterbug's dream

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... Including a tilt view screen 90° up, 45° down (useful for waist level and overhead use).
The cam will take 3 different size / type memory media ... I use the XD picture card 128 Mb at 25mm x 20mm x 1.5mm.
Max resolution 2560 x 1920 (4.92 megapixels) With, compared to a 35mm camera, 35-105mm focal lengths.. a good 'standard' range IMHO.

I have a simple little Fujifilm usb card reader, tis like a little external drive really (xd and smartmedia cards) permanently connected to PC.
(Have saved the odd spreadsheet to the card on occasion.)

So, 2.5 yrs down the line? No problems, well used..
Fits a reasonable coat pocket. Takes 4 batteries Ni-MH (1700mAh were the fitment when new), they remain in use ... Give good usable life twixt charges.. using the Olympus charger (part of package).
Oh, and it does have that elusive Mag alloy body 'Magnesium alloy (except compartment doors and LCD frame) '.. not really a concern of mine..

I know Nikon, Canon etc are fine camera builders ... I doubt there will be that much real difference twixt the big players, in a particular category.
I have an Olympus OM-1 SLR from '81-2 ish .... Still produces great pictures from 35mm film... Again never required attention apart from internal dusting from time to time.

BTW ... You see more Fords than Porsches on the road ......

Anyway the following is a fine site for digicam info .. Read ... Effective Pixels By Vincent Bockaert
Effective Pixels By Vincent Bockaert

......A classical example was Sony's DSC-F505V which effectively used only 2.6 megapixel (1,856 x 1,392) out of the 3.34 megapixel available on the sensor. This was because Sony fitted the then new 3.34 sensor into the body of the previous model. As the sensor was slightly larger, the lens was not able to cover the whole sensor.
So the total number of pixels on the sensor is larger than the effective number of pixels used to create the output image. Often this higher number is preferred to specify the resolution of the camera for marketing purposes......

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Well, talk of the devil ...

We are looking at the canon ixus 750...strange write up on it though...

Some say its a great tool...other say it very unforgiving when it comes to camera shake and is partial to taking blurred pix...

Any thoughts?

Ive handle the above mentioned Olympus...lovely camera...but how long will it be before that veiwfinder snaps off?

Zampa said:

...but how long will it be before that veiwfinder snaps off?

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never if you leave it sitting on the back, but as you say more to go wrong

AdamW said:

I would like to get a Sony camera.:

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I just ordered a sony p200 but didn't get it in time for chrimbo unfortunately. There were 3 main considerations for me, one is size; I really like small cameras that can easily fit in my pocket as I know from experience that I will always use it more than a larger model.

The second thing is timelag. My last digital, a pentax optio, was infuriatingly slow take both the first pic and also subsequent ones. if i am using a camera on automatic settings i want to be able to point and shoot, not to switch the camera on and wait for 5 secs before it is ready. also, if i am taking pics of something fast moving, or even taking pics of people where you want to take a series so you can use the best one, you really need the period between taking shots to be as low as poss.

Also i wanted a camera with an optical viewfinder. i started using the viewfinder on my last one because the lcd screen is sometimes difficult to see in bright weather and found that before long i was using it all the time for outdoor shots. to me it seems to give more of a sense of depth and composition than using the screen, although the screen can't be beaten for taking dimly-lit pics indoors.

After some research I found an interesting website where a photographer had reviewed lots of cameras and had given the sony a high rating on all these points as well as a good overall rating. I can't find the website now but I have the address on my pc at work and if you are interested I will post it in a couple of days.

As far as megapixels go, whilst I agree that there is a lot of hype about it, I find that having a high resolution is very useful when cropping a photo, which I do quite often. If I was not planning on doing any editing I would be happy with 2 or 3 megapixels but when you want to do some serious cropping and the show the pics on a 17" screen you can lose a lot of resolution. The sony has 7 megapixels.

i have got a fuji s 5500, read aboout it here

it also has (as you will see) internal view finder, if you break it, it doesnt cost too much either

Pete the fast moving subject is to do with how good your autofocus is and whether it can lock on quick enough to that focus point which on a compact will be the centre spot, most cameras have trouble as it doesnt know exactly what you want to take a photo of, so that,s why you need a manual focus, i dont know what compacts have that.

Also if you are taking photo's and you need to crop most of them i would suggest you get an slr, then you can take photo's of what you want instead of spending hours later farting about with serious cropping