Taxacom: digital camera question

[John Grehan]

Thanks Tony and Paulo, as well as an off-line respondent. It looks like I
will be able to afford up to 18 megapixels. As for the microscope - yeah,
you get what you pay for. But there is no way I can afford what I see in
university or museum facilities. But right now I have a microscope that is
over 50 years old (Kyowa - Japan) and used a small hand held digital camera
which sometimes produced some barely adequate images. So at least I will
now be better off to some degree. Through the kindness of a couple of
university and museum colleagues I have been able to get stacked images for
some important dissections.

Cheers, John

On Wed, Aug 14, 2024 at 6:17 PM Paulo Buckup <buckup at acd.ufrj.br> wrote:

> Hi John,
>         To achieve 300 dpi, each square inch in the final page requires
> 90,000 pixels. So, a full letter size page (or equivalent in PDF) requires
> over 8 megapixels. Allowing for some loss caused by cropping blank space
> around your specimen, you need at least a 10 megapixel camera for a full
> page image.
>         Keep in mind that if you do any resizing or rotation of the final
> image, the relationship between the pixels in the original camera sensor
> and
> the final image is lost, and the quality is severely reduced. So, if you do
> rotating or resizing in photoshop you will need a 40 megapixel camera to
> avoid individual pixel blurring.
>         In my experience the "cheap" microscope cameras do not meet
> traditional publication requirements (but will be accepted for publication
> in open access journals by careless editors, mostly because PDFs are only
> evaluated using monitors that have a resolution way below the 300 dpi
> standard).
>
> Cheers,
>
> Paulo Buckup
> Museu Nacional, UFRJ
> Brazil
> -----Mensagem original-----
> De: Taxacom [mailto:taxacom-bounces at lists.ku.edu] Em nome de John Grehan
> via
> Taxacom
> Enviada em: quarta-feira, 14 de agosto de 2024 11:45
> Para: taxacom <taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu>
> Assunto: Taxacom: digital camera question
>
> Hope someone on Taxacome has microscope camera expertise that can help me
> with a question concerning digital camera capability meeting publication
> needs. I am looking at buying a 'cheap' (less than $1,000 US) dissecting
> microscope and digital camera through Amscope. They have cameras ranging
> from 1 to 20 megapixels, but I have no idea how that relates to dpi where
> publications usually require at least 300 dpi. Can anyone clue me in on how
> to know what megapixel size will likely work to give me a sharp enough
> image
> for publication? Currently looking at a 5 megapixel camera which brings the
> setup well within my limits whereas 10 megapixel goes just over.
> Any enlightenment much appreciated. I am a total moron when it comes to
> digital camera tech.
>
> Thanks.
>
> John Grehan
>
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