How good a photo can you take with a £5 digital camera?

[mick_aka]

Last year I picked up an old sony DSC-S30 1.3MP digital camera off eBay, now im still a 35mm SLR guy myself (yea I know im an old fart) hence me not really wanting a flashy digital SLR, I do however not like taking my Olympus OM1 to concerts and festivals for fear of damage, hence a really cheap digital!

Anyway, I went for this camera largely because despite being old it had an oposable screen which comes in really handy.
Suprisingly, despite the resolution being on the low side it take remarkably satisfying pictures!





(images have of course been re-scaled for your forum viewing pleasure)

Not bad for a £5 camera :smile:

[Toon]

First one's great.

[mick_aka]

It's not too bad is it, the second was just a blatent excuse to post a pic of my car lol

[D856C]

This topic reminds me of an article Breaking the Myth of Megapixels.

I can show you plenty of enlargements from a 4-megapixel camera that look much sharper and better than ones from an 8-megapixel model. Meanwhile, a camera with more megapixels usually costs more, and its photos fill up your memory card and hard drive much faster. And more densely packed pixels on a sensor chip means more heat, which can introduce speckles into low-light shots.

[Laura Lynne]

Great article

[r-merone]

yeah..i use`d to own a 2mp kodak camera..and replaced it with a 4mp sonycyber shot.......the kodak was much cleaner(photo wise).....guess its the lenses too.

[sarah]

Very nice Mick! I have an old 1.3mpx Fuji and forget sometimes which photos are from it and which are from my other 5mpx camera.

Nice article D856C

[Andy]

I didnt read the article but i know for one that Pixels arnt important. however if printing onto A1 or larger then it cleary shows up in Pixels..

But the bottom line is if its for print a 5MP camera is more than good enough than more photo printers on the consumer market. so your images can only be sharp as the printer can output.

Im not saying if you take a picture in 1.3MP and send it to professionals for print will it be dull!

[sarah]

Yip, agree with you there Andy, I think the pixels only seem to become obvious if you're going to be printing something at a large scale.

[mick_aka]

I've printed from my 1.3mp onto A3 and it looks great, however I can imagine anything bigger than that looking pretty rough, Im currently looking at getting another cheap-ish sony digital as the screen is dying on this one :(