Digital Focus: Getting the Most From Your Camera

The finer points of digital camera resolution, in plain English.

Dave Johnson

Feature: Get the Most From Your Camera's Resolution

Have you ever noticed how people often fail to get their money's worth out of gadgets? I have a friend who never turns on the air conditioning in his car--even when it's really hot--because he can't bear the thought of reducing his fuel efficiency. Another buddy bought one of those fancy (and expensive) dual ovens, but I've never seen him use both at the same time.

Digital cameras can be like that as well, especially when it comes to resolution: We often get far less out of our cameras than the specifications on the box might suggest. So how can you get 3 megapixels of quality from every picture with your 3-megapixel camera? That's what we'll find out this week.

Shoot at Top Quality

Sometimes the simplest advice is the most useful. No matter what sort of digital camera you have, I recommend that you set it at its highest resolution pretty much all the time. If you have a 4-megapixel camera, for instance, stick with the 4-megapixel mode unless you're absolutely sure that your pictures won't have to be cropped, and you'll only need low resolution images. If you might want to print your pictures, it's safest to use top resolution--or you can end up with a picture that's too small to print.

Raw resolution--the number of pixels in the image--isn't the whole story, either. Most digital cameras let you choose an image quality setting. Image quality refers to how much compression the camera uses to save your images as JPEG files. High image quality means low compression, and thus bigger files--so not as many will fit on your camera's memory card. My advice is to stick with high image quality and simply buy a bigger memory card. Memory cards have gotten pretty inexpensive; you can find 256MB CompactFlash cards for about $45 to $75 at the PCWorld.com Product Finder.

Some readers occasionally ask me about their camera's other quality settings, such as TIFF and RAW. These options represent the ultimate in image quality, but the uncompressed files are huge, often limiting you to just a small handful of pictures on even the highest-capacity memory cards. I'd suggest leaving those formats to professionals who can afford to put buy media by the gigabyte.

Avoid High ISO

Another camera control that affects the quality and resolution of your pictures is the ISO setting. Just like a film camera, the ISO in a digital camera controls sensitivity to light. If you're shooting in a dark room or at night, you might want to dial up the ISO from the default (probably around 80 or 100) to 200, 400, or more. But higher ISO comes at a price: The camera will also capture more digital noise, reducing the overall quality of your images. If you need a higher ISO for low-light photography, go ahead--but remember to throttle it back when you're done.

Some cameras have a special noise reduction feature that you can use in conjunction with higher ISO settings. Feel free to try it, but check the results carefully, since many noise reduction schemes slightly blur the image.

Walk, Don't Zoom

Finally, it's worth noting that the way you frame your pictures dramatically affects how many pixels you end up with. Consider the digital zoom, which enlarges your image by electronically enlarging pixels. That mean a 3-megapixel camera with a 2X digital zoom is really shooting a 1.5-megapixel picture!

I suggest using the optical zoom, which delivers true resolution, and disabling the digital zoom entirely if you can--otherwise, just avoid using it. Need more reach? Walk closer to your subject to fill the frame using your "sneaker zoom."

Filling the frame is good advice in general. Get as close as possible, or zoom in optically. Any cropping you have to do on the PC to better frame or isolate your subject just wastes pixels. Get close and crop tightly to get your money's worth out of your digital camera.

Dave's Favorites: View Phone Pics on TV

With digital cameras showing up in so many mobile phones, the logical question is this: What can you do with all the snapshots you take? Sprint's TV commercials would have you believe that everyone is running around taking pictures of celebrities doing embarrassing things and immediately sending them to friends and family, but I'm not so sure. I'd rather be able to show my pictures of Gary Coleman dancing in the subway on my television.

That's exactly what I've been doing recently, thanks to Nokia's SU-2 Image Viewer. This clever little gadget is about the size of a pet turtle (kind of looks like one, too) and plugs into a video input on your television. There are no other connections to make--it's powered by four AAA batteries and gets its pictures from your mobile phone wirelessly, using Bluetooth.

That means you need a Bluetooth-enabled mobile phone, like the Nokia 3650 or the 7650 (both have digital cameras built in as well). So if you've been holding off on stepping up to a new mobile phone, here's a really good reason to make the switch. It's a blast to take pictures on your phone and then sit in your living room, "beaming" the shots to your television via the Image Viewer.

The Image Viewer is a brand-new product that Nokia says will be available soon. It'll cost $99 and will be available from Nokia.com.

Q&A: Protecting Images From Theft

We have a small consulting business and use pictures for demonstrations. Is there any way to permanently add our company's name to pictures so people can't use them as their own?

--Ellen Dolan, Spokane, Washington

Sure thing, Ellen. You don't mention how or where you intend to use these images, but the easiest solution is simply to load your images into any image editing program and use the text tool to write anything you like in a corner of the shot. Programs like Adobe Photoshop Elements and Paint Shop Pro let you choose the text color, size, and style.

The danger is that someone can crop away the part of the picture with text and use the rest of your photo. There isn't a good solution to that problem unless you place the text through the middle of the image, which can be something of an eyesore.

Other options abound. There are "watermarking" tools available, for instance, that embed distinctive digital signatures into images that are readable with special software--but these tools are generally pretty expensive. If your images are destined for the Web, you might also cut the images into pieces, making them harder to steal. Each picture would have to be downloaded in segments, then "glued together" in an image editing program, and that's more work than most people would be willing to invest in taking a few images from a Web page.

Hot Pics

Get published, get famous! Each week, we select our favorite reader-submitted photo based on creativity, originality and technique. Every month, the best of the weekly winners gets a prize valued at between $15 and $50.

Here's how to enter: Send us your photograph in JPEG format, at a resolution no higher than 640 by 480 pixels. Entries at higher resolutions will be immediately disqualified. If necessary, use an image editing program to reduce the file size of your image before e-mailing it to us. Include the title of your photo along with a short description and how you photographed it. Don't forget to send your name, e-mail address, and postal address. Before entering, please read the full description of the contest rules and regulations.

This week's Hot Pic: "Flowers," by Franco Amadori-Alberoni, Cincinnati

Franco says: "My name is Franco Amadori-Alberoni, and I'm 17 years old. This is a picture I took based on flowers that my dad gave to my mom for Valentines Day. I took the picture on my desk at night, with a desk lamp to illuminate the petals and create the dark shadows. I didn't use a flash."

Hot Pic of the Month: Each month we choose one of our weekly winners to be the Hot Pic of the Month. For June, we chose Dan Brandenburg's right-place-at-the-right-time portrait of a house on fire. Congratulations to Dan, and to everyone who won the Hot Pic of the Week in June. Keep those entries coming!

We want your feedback! Send your comments, questions, and suggestions about the newsletter itself to comments@bydavejohnson.com. If you have a question that you'd like to see answered in the weekly Q&A, send it to question@bydavejohnson.com.

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