African Wild Dog at Wellington Zoo, New Zealand.
The sign at the Wellington Zoo says that: "African wild dogs don't bark, instead they make high pitched squeals. A wild dog's white bushy tail acts as a flag to keep the pack in contact while hunting."
The above image was captured hand held in June 2009 with the full frame 24.6 megapixel Sony A900 camera, using the Sony 70-300 mm G SSM lens at a focal length of 300mm. This image was exposed at 1/500 sec. at F/6.3 and ISO-200.
The original image has a size of 6048 pixels x 4032 pixels. The above image is a crop which has an image size of 3984 pixels x 2655 pixels. If printed at 150 pixels per inch, the print size of the above cropped image is 26.6 inches x 17.7 inches. To obtain a full-sized 6048 pixels x 4032 pixels image with the above field of view, the photographer would need to use a 455mm telephoto lens.
In addition, note that the above image has been saved at a low quality and is displayed at a relatively small size. Therefore, a 26 inch wide print looks a great deal better and shows a lot more detail than can be seen in the image displayed above. To give you an appreciation of how much detail you can see in a big enlargement, below is a crop, saved at a low quality, of just a small area of the above image (as discussed below).
African Wild Dog at Wellington Zoo, New Zealand.
The image size of the above crop is 1484 pixels x 1012 pixels, which represents only about 25% of the width and height of the original image of 6048 pixels x 4032 pixels. Nevertheless, if printed at 150 pixels per inch, the print size would be 9.9 inches x 6.7 inches. The ability to obtain a print of this size from a picture which is only a small part of the original image, is one of the advantages of filming with a 24 megapixel camera.
Note that, in this example, the total area of the original image is 24,385,536 pixels (6048 pixels x 4032 pixels), and the total area of the above cropped image is just 1,501,808 pixels (1484 pixels x 1012 pixels). Therefore, the cropped image represents just 6.16% of the total area of the original image. To obtain a full-sized 6048 pixels x 4032 pixels image with the above field of view, the photographer would need to use a 1223mm telephoto lens.
Click here to see further pictures that demonstrate the amazing amount of detail in images taken by the Sony A900.
Click here for a discussion about how to obtain high quality large prints from your digital camera.
Click here for a discussion about some factors you should consider when deciding whether to upgrade your digital camera.
Click here to go back to "Nature" Page 1.