Camera Labs

hello everyone, I'm a newby here but not to the digital camera world. Purchased FZ 28 a few months ago and have never been able to get an image higher than 180dpi. No matter what setting I use the images are no different in their resolution. It almost wrecked my trip to Europe, nearly threw the thing away but kept thinking maybe I'm getting used to this new beast and haven't figured something out yet. I still haven't figured out what the problem might be. Any suggestion are welcome.

Hi jasejas,

May I offer you a warm welcome to the CameraLabs forum. Sorry to hear you've been having problems.

I don't have any experience with your camera and, more to the point, any software that comes with it. But, in general, I would offer that the number of pixels the camera is capturing is independent of the "dpi" as that setting is only relevant when you are printing. The issue would seem to be that you are unable to persuade your photo-editing software to scale your photos to the desired size when printing. Have a look at that software's Help system and do a search for dpi. Hopefully that will turn up some advice on how to change the setting. But if the software allows you to specify the "Canvas Size" (a Photoshop term which may differ in other software) then you shouldn't have to worry about setting the dpi at all.

Bob.

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OM-D E-M5 + ED 12-50mm, H-PS14042E, H-F007014E, L-RS014150E, M.ZUIKO DIGITAL 45mm 1:1.8.
Gitzo GT1541T, Arca-Swiss Z1 DP ball-head.
Astrophotography: TEC 140 'scope, FLI ML16803 camera, ASA DDM60 Pro mount.

Bob's correct - don't worry about the dpi figure.

If your FZ28 is using its full resolution, then the images will always have 3648x2736 pixels, whether the dpi is 10 or 1000. The dpi merely refers to what size you want to print it, and how many dots you'll subsequently have per inch.

If you want to print at 300 dpi, then just divide 3648x2736 by 300 to get the maximum size. If you want to print at 180 dpi, just divide 3648x2736 by 180 to get the maximum size.

Thanks for those replies gentlemen. My picutres just don't seem as sharp as I'd like them to be. When I zoom in and look at them even at 100% the detail just isn't there. Maybe I'm not explaining myself well but my Nikon 7MP pics provide sharper details when zoomed at 100% then FZ28. I'm happy to pm some picutres to anyone intersted in looking and maybe giving me some feedback or doing some diagnostics.

Hi jasejas,

Are you letting the camera do it's own thing or are you overriding the aperture?

Bob.

_________________
OM-D E-M5 + ED 12-50mm, H-PS14042E, H-F007014E, L-RS014150E, M.ZUIKO DIGITAL 45mm 1:1.8.
Gitzo GT1541T, Arca-Swiss Z1 DP ball-head.
Astrophotography: TEC 140 'scope, FLI ML16803 camera, ASA DDM60 Pro mount.

Bob, I'm leaving all settings as they are and not doing any radical over rides. All other settings seem to be ok for the maximum quality etc. I am going to do some more stringent and side by side tests with the FZ28 and Nikon and see if I'm imgining things.

Hi jasejas,

That's probably the best way forward to get the most out of the camera. The reason for my question is that with compact and superzoom cameras the lens usually has to be pretty much wide open (smallest f-number) to be able to achieve the resolution demanded by the sensor. Anything else means diffraction takes over and softens the image. Another source of softening is when the camera has to increase the ISO above it's lowest setting because of anything other than good lighting. When that happens the camera's on-board processing usually performs image noise reduction which inevitably means smearing of the fine detail.

Bob.

_________________
OM-D E-M5 + ED 12-50mm, H-PS14042E, H-F007014E, L-RS014150E, M.ZUIKO DIGITAL 45mm 1:1.8.
Gitzo GT1541T, Arca-Swiss Z1 DP ball-head.
Astrophotography: TEC 140 'scope, FLI ML16803 camera, ASA DDM60 Pro mount.

Hi jasejas, have a look at this post: http://www.cameralabs.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=14273&sid=850a90a0f48cc84027e7bf6a49c83d13
Bob is right from what I have learned on this forum. I came here with the same issue regarding quality of the FZ28. The higher the f-number the worse the quality (for compacts at least). Also you can change the sharpness and noise settings which may help. Auto white balance can also affect the quality. It's better to use white balance according to the weather, or do it manually. Finally RAW will give you better image quality, which takes the image as the sensor sees it, without using compression, white balance etc.. but at the cost of increased file size. I haven't had a chance to test anything as at uni till the end of the year, but I have heard these settings also help with the quality.

Please do check out the results pages of my FZ28 review - I noticed it selected a very small aperture under bright conditions in Auto mode which can reduce quality - many of mine were taken at f5.6 or f8, when you'd want a smaller f-number for the results on this model.

Gentlemen, thankyou for those suggestions. I will do my own experiment with aperature settings and report back. Carefully reading reubs' thread has given me some hope.