question-how does camera reduce pixels used

[roger S]

If I have an 8 megapixel camera and set it to 1 megapixel, does it combind pixels on the ccd to effectively reduce the picture to the lower resolution (binning?) ? Would it be correct that a 1 megapixel camera therefore would take a better picture at 1 megapixel resolution than an 8 megapixel camera set to take a picture at 1 megapixel.
Roger Schechter

[eric s]

My guess is that it does binning, but I'm not sure.

If everything else were equal, the 1MP might produce a better picture. But everything is rarely equal.

But don't forget that 8MP camera is probably newer, and therefor (probably) has better noise reduction logic. Also, to justify the higher cost they also probably use higher quality parts in the 8MP camera (less noise or faster AF or maybe faster writing to the memory card... who knows?)

Eric

[chiks]

I guess it resamples the 8mp into a 1mp.

[voxmagna]

That means it probably samples every 3rd or 4th pixel. UNLESS it is offering a high sensitivity mode for 800 ASA and above. In which case the sensible thing is to combine the photosites to get greater light sensitivity, but then you must lose resolution. VOX

[slwiser]

Hello

Olympus has something called TruePic that is trademarked that does this.

A link to this is: http://www.olympusamerica.com/cpg_se...nnovations.asp

There are other things that the Olympus does on the same page that are interesting. One thing in particular is the up scaling of a 4 megapixel image to almost 8 megapixel. I compared two images at highest resolutions and there is a definite improvement in the image. It is much like antilazing, it appears to take out the jags at the edges of the 4 mp image.

[slipe]

Bob, who goes by the handle Panasonic on the board, is an engineer for Panasonic and says that Panasonics stabilized cameras use all of the CCD and downsample the image before converting it to JPG. http://www.stevesforums.com/phpBB2/v...ic.php?t=20293