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Better to shoot high res and scale or shoot at desired resolution?

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proteus9

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I'm new to digital photography and I have a simple question.

I want to display 640 x 480 images on a web site.

Will the end result appear better if I just set the camera at 640 x 480 and simply copy the image to the web site, or would it look better to shoot at a higher resolution (say, 2560 x 1920) and scale it to 640 x 480?
 
Shay said:
The images will look better when you shoot full res and resample
down in an image editor. You also have the wonderful option of
printing out the good ones later if you wish.
--
Shay

My Sony F707 Gallery: http://shaystephens.com/portfolio.asp
Click to expand...
Hi Shay,

sorry but I don't totally agree w/u. While it's true that shooting hi res gives u the opportunity to print in a second time, when u scale an image u have to make sure that the interpolation software u're using is a professional one... otherwise the interpretation of pixel values can sometimes be very poor... so, like when u're using the scanner, better aiming exactely to where your goal is... Rescaling is always a transormation of the image, an extra step and a loss of data. A different question is when we speak of downgrading of color bit... in that case and in a relative way, interpolation can be worth...
Lud
--lud
 
ludman said:
Hi Shay,
sorry but I don't totally agree w/u. While it's true that shooting
hi res gives u the opportunity to print in a second time, when u
scale an image u have to make sure that the interpolation software
u're using is a professional one... otherwise the interpretation of
pixel values can sometimes be very poor... so, like when u're using
the scanner, better aiming exactely to where your goal is...
Rescaling is always a transormation of the image, an extra step and
a loss of data. A different question is when we speak of
downgrading of color bit... in that case and in a relative way,
interpolation can be worth...
Lud
Click to expand...
I gotta jump in here......

If you shoot at the highest rez and you shoot a GREAT photo...you have it in all it's glory.

If you shoot at a lower rez that same shot is not going to look as good when resampled bigger.

You can make a pic smaller easily. But if shot at a lower rez those pixels are gone forever.

Once in a lifetime shots cannot be reshot.

JMHO

--Ron http://users.qconline.com/~starship/gallery.htm
 
Ron Hodgson said:
I gotta jump in here......

If you shoot at the highest rez and you shoot a GREAT photo...you
have it in all it's glory.

If you shoot at a lower rez that same shot is not going to look as
good when resampled bigger.

You can make a pic smaller easily. But if shot at a lower rez
those pixels are gone forever.

Once in a lifetime shots cannot be reshot.

JMHO

--
Ron
http://users.qconline.com/~starship/gallery.htm
Click to expand...
I have to second this. I never ever think about switch to a lower resolution on the DA. First, 5MP is what I paid for and what I wanted and the cause I got the DA. Second, cropping and downsampling is easy compared to blow up a picture.

D.Jenett
 
I would disagree, when you resample down you do actually get a better image than the native 640x480. Here are two images, the first one is a 640x480 native image with no processing done to it. The second photo is a resampled 2560x1920 image with no other processing done to it (no unsharp masking, no color corrections, etc)

Native 640x480



Resized only 2560x1920 to 640x480

http://shay.ws/graphics/640x480resized.jpg--Shay My Sony F707 Gallery: http://shaystephens.com/portfolio.asp
 
I was positive of what to do before but just in case i wasn't this would have convinced me. Good example Shay.
Shay said:
I would disagree, when you resample down you do actually get a
better image than the native 640x480. Here are two images, the
first one is a 640x480 native image with no processing done to it.
The second photo is a resampled 2560x1920 image with no other
processing done to it (no unsharp masking, no color corrections,
etc)

Native 640x480



Resized only 2560x1920 to 640x480



--
Shay

My Sony F707 Gallery: http://shaystephens.com/portfolio.asp
Click to expand...
--HockeyDave http://www.pbase.com/igotjump
 
Shay said:
I would disagree, when you resample down you do actually get a
better image than the native 640x480. Here are two images, the
first one is a 640x480 native image with no processing done to it.
The second photo is a resampled 2560x1920 image with no other
processing done to it (no unsharp masking, no color corrections,
etc)

Native 640x480



Resized only 2560x1920 to 640x480



--
Shay

My Sony F707 Gallery: http://shaystephens.com/portfolio.asp
Click to expand...
I agree with you.

And that leads us to the question how they do the smaller images. IMHO they just get the 640x480 from the CCD and save it. If this is true, the thread which mention shooting at 2048x1536 makes the same sense. ;)
May be not that noticable, but in fact at the same effect.

D.Jenett
 
Yes, also note the amount of extra detail in the resampled version too, the sharpness is better, and the artifacts are far less than the native 640x480. I see the other sizes from the camera as a convenience mostly, because the quality is definately worse than resampling.--Shay My Sony F707 Gallery: http://shaystephens.com/portfolio.asp
 
HockeyDave said:
Shay said:
I would disagree, when you resample down you do actually get a
better image than the native 640x480. Here are two images, the
first one is a 640x480 native image with no processing done to it.
The second photo is a resampled 2560x1920 image with no other
processing done to it (no unsharp masking, no color corrections,
etc)

Native 640x480



Resized only 2560x1920 to 640x480



--
Shay

My Sony F707 Gallery: http://shaystephens.com/portfolio.asp
Click to expand...
--
HockeyDave
http://www.pbase.com/igotjump
Click to expand...
Nice shot Shay!

I hope I made myself clear about what I meant:Of course u cannot resize a small picture hoping to reach the same quality of a hi rez shot; Doing the opposite u have many informations the software can work with to give detail to a lighter image,therefore, POTENTIALLY your hi rez shot, once resized, can be better than the same shot directely taken at low rez. What practically can make the difference, and sometimes subvert this theory, is a lousy interpolation software....!There is not a "universal trick", u just have to know your tools very well; Space is a physical limit... and although I too have bought a 5MP camera 4 a specific reason, in several situations u just cannot store all of the 5MP full size shots u'd like...
Lud
--lud
 
I swear I can't tell the difference between the two photos, but then again, I am new at this and have much to learn.

I accept that it's better to resize down (as long as you have a decent program to do it).

But then that begs another question. If it is better to resize down from hi-res, why doesn't Sony do exactly that in their camera? And if they do that in the camera, then wouldn't it be better to shoot in 640 x 480 if you want to display only in 640 x 480?
 
We've talked about similar issues in past threads, so a search will help on this one. For example,

http://www.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1009&message=1144544

Some images will simply show the effect to greater degree, but I'd agree with the general point that it is better to shoot high-rez. We are not factoring in memory and storage sizes here. We are only talking about the quality of the end result, given the tools that most are likely to be using here in the forum.
Jim Walker said:
I swear I can't tell the difference between the two photos, but
then again, I am new at this and have much to learn.

I accept that it's better to resize down (as long as you have a
decent program to do it).

But then that begs another question. If it is better to resize down
from hi-res, why doesn't Sony do exactly that in their camera? And
if they do that in the camera, then wouldn't it be better to shoot
in 640 x 480 if you want to display only in 640 x 480?
Click to expand...
-- Ulysses
 
Bottom line on these issues is that it's really up to the user.

The F707, for example, has a very nicely working system and compression scheme for its smaller image sizes, E-mail mode included.

Can you technically do a better job of it yourself in decent software when resizing? Sure.

But do you always want to do it that way? Depends upon how much time you have and whether you like fiddling back and forth with the files, making comparisons, etc. Probably Sony realizes that MOST people don't really care. Particularly not Grandma or whoever the recipient of these pics will be. And so you'll be just fine using the in-camera modes that are provided.

Enjoy!
miles miller said:
what about using the e-mail feature on the camera and have it all.-
just a thought ,Ive only had my F-707 a couple of weeks and havent
tried the feature yet
Click to expand...
-- Ulysses
 
Jim Walker said:
But then that begs another question. If it is better to resize down
from hi-res, why doesn't Sony do exactly that in their camera? And
if they do that in the camera, then wouldn't it be better to shoot
in 640 x 480 if you want to display only in 640 x 480?
Click to expand...
I've always assumed that the Sony camera does exactly that. If you shoot 640x 480, the camera is still using all five million sensors, then it's resampling the image down.

On the one hand, maybe Sony doesnt use the best resampling algorithm because either they were (1) too lazy to program it; or (2) they wanted a fast algorithm and were willing to sacrifice quality.

On the other hand, since the resampling takes place on the original CCD data which uses 14 bit color depth, it might be better than resampling an bit color depth image.

And I guess the answer is as others have stated, it's EASIER and FASTER for you to shoot 640 x 480, but all the images you shoot will be useless for anything but the web. If you shoot at full res, the photos can make great 8 x 10 prints (better than film).

So if you think you are shooting something important, shoot full res, but if you are sure you just need the photo for the specific purpose of posting to the web, go ahead and shoot 640 x 480.
 
Another could be some of these pictures in low res, is a picture once in a lifetime, that good. And you have no opportunity to retake it. It's that good you want it printed, but at low res you get a 3 by 4. When you take it at high res you can print it at A4 -format.

That's my reason for always shooting at max res.

Nico
 
bob d said:
Jim Walker said:
But then that begs another question. If it is better to resize down
from hi-res, why doesn't Sony do exactly that in their camera? And
if they do that in the camera, then wouldn't it be better to shoot
in 640 x 480 if you want to display only in 640 x 480?
Click to expand...
I've always assumed that the Sony camera does exactly that. If you
shoot 640x 480, the camera is still using all five million sensors,
then it's resampling the image down.

On the one hand, maybe Sony doesnt use the best resampling
algorithm because either they were (1) too lazy to program it; or
(2) they wanted a fast algorithm and were willing to sacrifice
quality.

On the other hand, since the resampling takes place on the original
CCD data which uses 14 bit color depth, it might be better than
resampling an bit color depth image.

And I guess the answer is as others have stated, it's EASIER and
FASTER for you to shoot 640 x 480, but all the images you shoot
will be useless for anything but the web. If you shoot at full
res, the photos can make great 8 x 10 prints (better than film).

So if you think you are shooting something important, shoot full
res, but if you are sure you just need the photo for the specific
purpose of posting to the web, go ahead and shoot 640 x 480.
Click to expand...
The F707 has an excellent resampling algorithm going to 2X digital zoom and from 5MP to 3MP. From Shay's 640x480 examples it appears to have a less precise resample from 5MP to 640x480.--Bobbo
 
Shay said:
here is an animated comparison between the two, I have zoomed in
200% to make the comparison easier to see.
Click to expand...
Wow! That makes it totally obvious that the resampling done on your computer did a much better job than the internal Sony resampling.
 
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