Is there any benifit to shooting at max MP on a point and shoot?

[Red Squirrel]

From what I read, non DSLR cameras tend to do lot of pixel guessing and are not truely what they are rated at. So a 12mp camera may be more like 6. At least that's what it seems like when I open up a picture at 100%. Am I better off just shooting at 6, or will it then be more like 3? I always like to capture the most information I can, then resize/crop after if needed.

My camera is a SonyCyber-shot DSC-w210. If the lighting is right and all the planets are aligned and I'm taking the picture at the right angle, it will take great pictures, but most of the time, when I look at a picture zoomed in at 100% it feels more like I'm zoomed in at 200%.

 

[Gooberlx2]

*Most sensors are bayer sensors, and rgb pixels are laid out in some sort of order like this.

In your example, there are 12MP worth of photo sites, but software will have to do some (very smart) guess work to figure out color. This is called demosaicing. In the end, you still end up with a picture that's X by Y dimensions in line with the MP output of the camera.

I think that when you lower the MP setting, it's essentially just resizing in-camera.

*foveon sensors use a different methodology, similar to how film actually works. So a 12MP sensor actually puts out a 4MP image. There's a fair amount of discussion on various forums about the pros and cons vs bayer sensors.

 

[ElFenix]

pixel guessing?

 

[Throckmorton]

Is there any benefit to shooting less than max res, vs resizing later?

 

[Gooberlx2]

Is there any benefit to shooting less than max res, vs resizing later?

It doubt results would be appreciably different, unless the camera has a shitty resizing algorithm.

 

[vbuggy]

From what I read, non DSLR cameras tend to do lot of pixel guessing and are not truely what they are rated at. So a 12mp camera may be more like 6. At least that's what it seems like when I open up a picture at 100%. Am I better off just shooting at 6, or will it then be more like 3? I always like to capture the most information I can, then resize/crop after if needed.

My camera is a SonyCyber-shot DSC-w210. If the lighting is right and all the planets are aligned and I'm taking the picture at the right angle, it will take great pictures, but most of the time, when I look at a picture zoomed in at 100% it feels more like I'm zoomed in at 200%.

It depends on how the camera handles it, but unless your camera has pixel-scaling (or whatever it's called) facilities, it may not make a whole lot of difference.

Here's samples shot using the Fuji HS20EXR bridge camera - the interest point for the Fuji is that the special EXR sensor modes specifically cut down the pixel count and tie them together while shooting to achieve better pictures. The HS20 has three EXR modes - dynamic range priority, low-light, and resolution priority - each mode steps down the pixel count before adjusting anything else, but the processing is done using the sensor itself, not in the images produced.

I shot the first picture (all pictures at same focal length / distance from subject, shot on tripod) in automatic at maximum sensor resolution, and the second in dynamic range priority EXR. The difference should be pretty noticeable.





Now, what I did is resize the full-pixel-count pic to match the EXR image. You can see that EXR definitely has an effect. So it really depends on how your camera behaves when you reduce the pixel count in-camera. I have no experience of the Cyber-shot so can't speak of it, but perhaps you could try a similar test - i.e. choose a relatively static subject, shoot at full res then reduced res, then try resizing the full-res picture to the same size as the reduced-res picture and see if you notice a major difference.

To put the EXR performance into perspective though, this picture is from my APS-C compact.

 

[Paladin3]

Only you can answer that question since only you know what your needs are, but I sometimes feel the importance of always shooting in RAW can be overstated.

I'm shooting Santa photos in the local mall this year with a Canon XT on JPG high settings. Most customers are buying 4x6 prints from an HP PhotoSmart inkjet printer on site. A few are ordering larger packages that I fulfill through Shutterfly.com.

Since the largest print I offer is an 8x10, and I am shooting properly exposed and white balanced images under controlled lighting so I don't need to correct anything in Photoshop, .jpg is the correct choice to simplify and speed up my workflow.

I shoot tethered so images are popping up on the monitor as I shoot them, and go from kid on Santa's lap to selecting, printing and handing prints to happy parents in as little as 6-7 minutes. I could not do that with a full-size RAW image.

If for some reason you can not achieve adequate images with in-camera processing (jpg) then of course go with full resolution RAW images so you can do the processing yourself later.

 

[Gooberlx2]

Only you can answer that question since only you know what your needs are, but I sometimes feel the importance of always shooting in RAW can be overstated.

I'm shooting Santa photos in the local mall this year with a Canon XT on JPG high settings. Most customers are buying 4x6 prints from an HP PhotoSmart inkjet printer on site. A few are ordering larger packages that I fulfill through Shutterfly.com.

Since the largest print I offer is an 8x10, and I am shooting properly exposed and white balanced images under controlled lighting so I don't need to correct anything in Photoshop, .jpg is the correct choice to simplify and speed up my workflow.

I shoot tethered so images are popping up on the monitor as I shoot them, and go from kid on Santa's lap to selecting, printing and handing prints to happy parents in as little as 6-7 minutes. I could not do that with a full-size RAW image.

If for some reason you can not achieve adequate images with in-camera processing (jpg) then of course go with full resolution RAW images so you can do the processing yourself later.

I'm not sure you understood the question. OP's question doesn't really have anything to do with shooting RAW.

 

[Paladin3]

I'm not sure you understood the question. OP's question doesn't really have anything to do with shooting RAW.

Yeah, my bad.

I had a discussion with three days ago with a coworker regarding when RAW vs JPEG was appropriate. I guess I was dragging that conversation into this one.

 

[corkyg]

"Is there any benifit to shooting at max MP on a point and shoot?"

Yes. It allows one to maximize the number of useful pixels in a cropped area.

 

[Fardringle]

I'd ask this question instead:

Is there any benefit to NOT shooting at max MP on any camera? Unless you're shooting with a really small memory card or you're on a long trip and running out of space with no way to move the pictures to a computer, I'd say the answer is always no. Even if you don't need the extra resolution all of the time, having it available is nice when you end up with a picture that you really like.

 

[corkyg]

Good point, Fardringle. Yes - one can always reduce the number of pixels in an image using just about any photoware, but you can't add them if they aren't there.

 

[Red Squirrel]

"Is there any benifit to shooting at max MP on a point and shoot?"

Yes. It allows one to maximize the number of useful pixels in a cropped area.

That's what I was wondering especially, with a P&S. Does the higher mp setting really get more info, or is it just faking it? I know with a high end camera it's always good, but with a P&S am I just making huge pics for nothing? When I look at pics from my camera at 100% it almost looks like it was taken at a lower setting and just enlarged in Photoshop.

 

[Gooberlx2]

That's what I was wondering especially, with a P&S. Does the higher mp setting really get more info, or is it just faking it? I know with a high end camera it's always good, but with a P&S am I just making huge pics for nothing? When I look at pics from my camera at 100% it almost looks like it was taken at a lower setting and just enlarged in Photoshop.

It's not faking it. If you're shooting a 12mp p&s, it has 12mp worth of photoreceptors. What you're seeing is likely noise reduction and other artifact due to the fact that p&s sensors are so much smaller than dslr sensors.

 

[vbuggy]

That's what I was wondering especially, with a P&S. Does the higher mp setting really get more info, or is it just faking it? I know with a high end camera it's always good, but with a P&S am I just making huge pics for nothing? When I look at pics from my camera at 100% it almost looks like it was taken at a lower setting and just enlarged in Photoshop.

Hopefully as my pictures (can you see them?) pointed out, it's definitely more info but not always *pictorially relevant* info.

As Goober said, although you are seeing 12MP's worth of info, there's a lot of artifacts caused by the small sensor. Which is why the specialised modes like the EXR on the Fujis try to compensate by doubling the light collection area on a small sensor.