I am new to digital photograpy I need to ask questions that come to mind. After I purchase a Nikon Coolpix 950 camera I plan to use the Fine mode for all my shots. I see you can select a Fine/Large mode, Fine/Medium mode, and Fine/Small mode. If I was to make a print from all three modes (same shot) what size of printing paper will I need to print each shot? From what I see on the Comparometer the Fine/Large print is huge. I realize that it has all the info as the info as the Fine/Small print but is much larger. Like a telephoto effect. Say I was photograping wild animals at a distance.Can I selectively print a portion of the large print thus doing away with the need of any aux telephoto lens? All input will be greatly appreciated. Contact me directly at: talltandj@aol.com Thanks, Tom

-- Thomas Ferko (talltandj@aol.com), March 12, 1999

Answers

The effect you're seeing is probably more due to your net browser than the camera.

With some relatively inexpensive software (I highly recommend Jasc's Paint Shop Pro 5.0) you will be able to crop and or resize your images to print at any resolution or image size you desire. The camera will probably come with software that will let you resize.

When you crop out a portion of the picture you can enlarge that, but you will lose resolution, and the image will become increasingly more jagged or out of focus.

This will all become more clear when you've had a chance to play around with it.

-- Matt Chroust (matthew.chroust@mkg.com), March 26, 1999.

What you need to keep in mind is that if you are going to print the pictures, the size of the highest quality printout you can make is determined by the size of the picture you take. A photo quality printer, prints at approximately 300 dots per inch (Reagrdless of what the manufacturer rates them at, I am told). So if you take your photos in the small mode (640 X 480) you will have to size your printouts to just over 2 inches wide to achieve the best quality print. Thats not much picture to look at. If you take them in the large mode (1600 X 1200), you can print them at 5 X 7 and some people say even at 8 X 10 they still look really good. Most monitors display 75 pixels per inch, so you don't need to make the pictures as large if you are just going to view them on the monitor. The fine mode uses the least amount of compression (less artifacts in the photo) as compared to normal and basic which uses more and more compression respectively. Or you can save your pics at the hi mode and have no compression or artifacts at the cost of only being able to put one pic on the 8 meg CF card that comes standard with the camera.

-- Jack Faxon (rmalo@mediaone.net), March 28, 1999.