question about sony dsp-p200

[eskool16]

Hello,

first of all, i want to say i appreciate any help i can get with this since i'm a total novice with cameras.

i have a 7.2mp sony cybershot, which (i believe) is shooting under 7.2mp. (the screen says 7m.) however, the photos come out all blurry and aren't recommended to print as a 4x6 photo. someone said the dots (?) are really low, as in 60x80, and need to be like 300? or something like that. i was wondering if anyone knew how to fix the problem. i've looked in the instruction manual and they didn't seem to address this issue.

if anyone has any advice, i'd really appreciate it a lot.

[Sintares]

The image sizes in pixels the P200 take are

• 3,072 x 2,304
• 3,072 x 2,048 (3:2)
• 2,592 x 1,944
• 2,048 x 1,536
• 1,600 x 1,200
• 640 x 480

Now when you said 60x80, and need to be like 300 I thought perhaps you meant they where taken by accident at 640x480 , however your mention of need to be like 300 is perhaps a reference to the PPI (pixels per inch) that is encoded into the photos and by default can often be 72..

This is actually irrelevant , as long as your picture is actually 3,072 x 2,304 then the ppi is nothing to worry about, as it is a default figure only.

300 ppi is said to be around the best figure for an excellent quality photo, so if your image is 3,072 x 2,304 then you should at 300ppi be able to get a 3072/300 = 10.24inch x 2304/300 = 7.68inch photo with great quality.

However some people see the default ppi at 72 and panic saying thats too low , what they don't realise is , the actual pixels are what matters, so that same 3072x2304 image at 72ppi would try to print out at a massive 42x32 inches !

All they have to do is change in their editing or image program the 72 figure to 300 to get a great 10x8 photo.

At 150 ppi you would get a 20x16 that looks good on the wall when viewed from a couple of feet etc etc

So really if the person is actually talking about 72 vs 300 ppi while the image was properly taken at full resolution and is actually full size at 3072x2304 pixels then ask them to try reading the manual or get someone who actually knows what they are talking about ...

If you have no idea if the images are actually full resolution then open them in any editor or photo program and look at the size of the image, even MSPaint can tell you (image - attributes) and thats the most basic editor ever and free with every copy of windows ..

[bascom]

According to MS paint, my photos are 96 x 96 dots per inch, which is 9,216. Their size is 1,600 x 1,200. They print fine as 4 x 6's.

1,600 pixels / 96 ppi = 16.67 inches
1,200 pixels / 96 ppi = 12.5 inches
Does that mean I should be able to print 16.67 x 12.5 photos with these settings? Should I raise the PPI level to get better looking 4x6's?

[Sintares]

Does that mean I should be able to print 16.67 x 12.5 photos with these settings?

You can print a photo at any size you want, at 96ppi the pic would be 16.67x12.5. You could also drop to 12 ppi and print an image over 10feet across, that would be ok seen on a billboard from 30yrds away .. So feel free to print at whatever resolution you want, the larger the ppi the better the pic, but whatever you want you can do.

96 ppi is only used if you print at 16x12

When you print the file at 6x4 then the pixels are divided automatically by the inches ie

1600/6 x1200/4 = 266ppi x 300ppi

Actually the real value somewhere between those as 1600x1200 is not the same ratio as 6/4 so some pixels are lost to cropping .

[bascom]

Thanks for the info. I have a Canon A610 and see no way to adjust the ppi. Do other cams like the P200 allow ppi changes?

[Sintares]

The ppi added by the camera to the exif info is a default setting and is to be ignored.

When you print to a specific size of paper the printer driver and/or your photo editor simply takes the total number of pixels and divides them among the number of inches in the paper size automatically.

If you use Photoshop etc you can resize image and set the ppi yourself which will change the reported actual document size in the dialog box eg

http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b255/Sintares/ppi.jpg

If I change the ppi to 150 and untick resample the dialog will show the same number of pixels but change the document size to 16x16 inches, or as an alternative I could enter the document size I wanted to print at and the ppi would be altered to fit automatically.

As long as resample is unticked the ppi information is the only thing that changes, if I tick resample then the program "creates" new pixels to make the image larger or removes pixels to shrink it which in general you will not want to do if you have enough pixels to start with.