Originally posted by G-mac:
<STRONG>Hi all!
I thought 2.1 megapixel cameras could provide sufficient resolution to print out very good full page photos</STRONG>
Well, I have a Canon Elph S100. It's 2.1 megapixels, that's 1600 x 1200 pixels. To print an image at 300 ppi, That makes for about 5" x 4" But, you don't need 300 ppi unless your line screen is 150 lpi (typical of art books or fine coffee table books). For average press printing, you can get away with 266 ppi without any quality loss at all. That gives you a finished size of 6" x 4.5" If you are looking to get inkjet prints, you only need about 150 ppi -- that will come out about letter size.
But get this: I took a pic, blew it up to 24" x 36" @ 150 ppi in Photoshop, then had it output on a wide format printer (at a service bureau, I don't know what kind of printer exactly, I suspect an inkjet). It looks great! It's not National Geographic quality, and there is some noise in the image, but it's not jaggy at all.
If you are on a tight budget, you can squeak by on 2.1 megapixels. But if you are going to do this a lot, and you don't want to have tweak all your files, go larger. Higher Megapixels are certainly going to yield higher print quality, so long as it doesn't take crappy pictures to start with.
Some camera maunfacturers
(I know Canon does for sure) offer samples of pictures taken with their cameras for download. I'd download some samples, and play with those. Another consideration will be the camera's compression. Most cameras (I think all in the price range you are talking about) save files in jpeg format. That sacrifices image quality right off. I would try to find one that uses minimal compression so that you have as much detail as possible in the photo. (It's called superfine mode on my Elph)
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