Photo Tips to Shorten Your Learning Curve



American Bison (Buffalo)

                                                                             
Cameras
What you need for quality photos

 Do not buy anything less than 5 MP today 10 MP is best.
 Compact Cameras 3-10 MP $100.00-$200.00
 Entry Level D-SLR Digital Single Lens Reflex $500.00-$1,000.00
 Advanced D-SLR $1,000.00-$2,000.00 (body only-NO lens)

Pixels vs. Resolution
Pixel is defined as an abbreviation of the expression “picture element”.
 1 pixel = 1 dot, one color. 1-pixel = 3 “Bytes” of storage (Red, Green, Blue)
 3 Mpixels + 3,000,000 pixels = 128 Mbyte card
 3 Mpixel camera - 9,000,000 Bytes of Storage = 14 photos

Resolution
 An image of 150 ppi for an image size of 8”x 10” would be written:
    8”x 10” @ 150ppi, which is 1200 pixels x 1500 pixels
 An image of 300 ppi for an image size of 8”x 10” would be written:
    8”x 10” @ 300 ppi, which is 2400 pixels x 3000 pixels

 Thus the 8”x 10” @ 300 ppi will have a higher resolution than 8”x 10” @ 150 ppi
    Also 8x10 @ 150ppi will not be a lower resolution than a 4x5 @300ppi
    They are exactly the same: They both have a file size of 5.16 megabytes (5.6 Mb)
Standard resolution of images for press printing (magazine format) is 300 dpi (dots per inch) this is similar to ppi (pixels per inch)
Many monitor screens are set for 800 x 600 or 1024 x 768 measured in pixels.
Normal resolution for Emails is 72 ppi. Emails will normally compress JPEG files to this resolution.

File Sizes are measured in kilobytes (Kb), megabytes (Mb) or occasionally gigabytes (GB)
8 bits make 1 byte;
1024 bytes make one kilobyte;
1000 kilobytes make one megabyte; (one million bytes make 1 MB)
1000 megabytes make one gigabyte; (one thousand million bytes make 1GB)

Card sizes: This depends on two settings within your camera Large, Medium, Small for pixels and aprox. Value for compression Superfine, Fine, Normal

128 MB you’ll get aprox.              14 photos
256 MB you’ll get approx.            53 photos
2.0 GB                                       438 photos
4.0 GB                                       877 photos
8.0, 16.0, 32.0, 64.0 cards are now available

Photographic Images
For printing a good image you should have a minimum of 1MB from that image.

Photo                Minimum               Recommended                  Professional level cameras
Size                   Megapixels           Megapixels                                     Megapixels

Point and shoot cameras
5 x 7                      1 MP                  2MP
8 x 10                    3 MP                  4 MP
11 x 14                  4 MP                  5 MP
12 x 18                  4 MP                  6 MP This is the standard image size for competitions
From here up you are looking at midrange DSLR cameras
13 x 19                                                                                                             8 MP
16 x 20                                                                                                             10 MP
                                                                                    Canon 40D
20 x 30                   6 MP                  8 MP                                                       12 MP
30 x 40                                                                         Canon 50D, 7D            15 - 18 MP
At this point you get into the full frame cameras/advanced DSLR
Over 30 x 40                                                                                                     21 - 24 MP
Medium Format 30 – 60 MP

Hope this helps.