Elephant meets rooster at Auckland Zoo, New Zealand.
The above image was captured hand held with the full frame 24.6 megapixel Sony A900 camera, using the Carl Zeiss F2.8 24-70mm lens, with a 60mm focal length, and exposed at 1/125 second at f/11. The original image size was 6048 pixels x 4032 pixels. If printed at 150 pixels per inch (ppi), the print width of an image that is 6048 pixels wide, is 40.32 inches (6048 pixels divided by 150 ppi). Note that the above image has been saved at a low quality and displayed at a relatively small size. Therefore, a 40 inch wide print looks a great deal better and shows a lot more detail.
To give you an appreciation of how much detail you can see in a big enlargement, below is a crop of just a small area of the above image.
Rooster at Auckland Zoo, New Zealand.
The above crop (saved at a low quality) has an image size of 1194 pixels x 796 pixels, which represents only about 20% of the width and height of the original image. If printed at 150 pixels per inch, this would make a print of about 8 inches x 5.3 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 304mm telephoto lens. The ability to obtain a good quality 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 cropped image is 950,424 pixels (1194 pixels x 796 pixels). Therefore, the cropped image represents just 3.9% of the total area of the original image.
In the very short time I had available before the rooster moved away, I also managed to get this one:
The rooster also moved quite close to another elephant, as shown in this photograph:
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.