Megapixel setting for available light.

On Tue, 24 Apr 2007 12:57:10 GMT, David J Taylor wrote:

> So having looked at the numbers, I conclude that what these cameras offer
> is an in-camera crop, decreasing both the number of pixels and the
> field-of-view proportionately. Saves cropping afterwards, and magnifies
> the image in the EVF compared to the non-cropped case. There is no
> interpolation involved as with digital zoom.

Yes, this was discussed about a year ago where the same conclusion
was generally agreed upon. There's one advantage to using the
so-called "extended optical zoom" in that the file sizes of the
camera-cropped images should be reduced in proportion to the
resolution reduction, allowing more images to be saved on each
memory card. But I wouldn't use this feature for the same "memory
is cheap" reason that is often given by most people here which is to
take pictures at the highest resolution and quality (lowest
compression). That is, you'll never know that at some future date
you might want more image to work with and regret having been so
memory-miserly. That's even more true with not using extended
optical zoom, since what's lost is not just some quality, but 100%
of the image area outside of the cropped region.

By allowing the computer to do the panning, zooming and cropping
instead of the camera, you have more leeway to get best possible
crop, and there's the possibility of serendipity providing some
welcome subject matter outside of the cropped area that the
photographer might not have been aware of at the time the picture
was taken. But if cropped by the camera, there's not even a clue of
what was missed and which might occasionally provide a nice bonus.
There doesn't even have to be a lot of additional labor involved in
cropping every image since it can be easily automated to provide
exactly the same central crop that the camera would have done. Then
if 1% or 2% of the images would provide a benefit from using the
non-cropped area, such as if in some pictures people are discovered
with accidentally cropped feet, heads, limbs, etc., the original
uncropped images would still be available to make it possible to
correct the photographer's original framing mistake.

"Don Stauffer in Minnesota" <stauffer RemoveThis @usfamily.net> wrote in message
news:1177335328.515505.317990@n59g2000hsh.googlegroups.com...
> On Apr 23, 7:31 am, "j...@wexfordpress.com" <j... RemoveThis @wexfordpress.com>
> wrote:
>> In available light situations I have been taking pictures with my
>> FujiFilm E900 set at 5 megapixels. I can go up to a maximum of 9.1
>> megapixels or down to lower values. I know that higher settings
>> generate a larger image on the card. But is there any effect, positive
>> or negative, on the available light situation? Is vulnerablitity to
>> camera shake increased, decreased or stay the same with higher pixel
>> density?
>>
>> I have years with film cameras but this is my first digital. I can set
>> shutter speed and/or aperture manually but I have been using the
>> automatic settings.
>>
>> John Culleton
>
> Higher noise can result, because in some cases when the camera
> downsamples, this tends to average the noise a bit.
>
> Same thing for camera shake. The motion blur can be more noticable at
> the higher resolution- BUT, if you downsample in an editor, you will
> get the same thing as in the camera downsampled image.
>
> So there is no advantage to shooting in the downsampled mode. You can
> always do the same thing yourself afterwords, and compare. If the
> high res shot is okay, fine. Otherwise you can downsample and use
> that.
>

Actually that seems to be opposite from what I have read elswhere, do you
have a reference?

Thanks.