Hello,

I have a 720p projector and am now doing slide shows for the family with photos from my Canon Powershot 5.1 megapixel camera.

On a 84 inch screen, the photos look good. But I had hoped sharper.

My questions:

For the photos to look better, would I need to get a new camera with 7, 8, 9, 10 megapixels?? Would that make the difference???

Or would I need to upgrade projector to 1080p to get better results?????

Or would I need to go to 1080p AND a 7,8,9, 10+??? megapixel camera???

Or lastly, do I need a better camera (i.e. better lense/brand)????

Sorry for the naive questions, but I really don't know.

Thanks in advance!

I have an 8mp camera and a 720p projector and photos look great. But the photos have to be great (in focus etc) before hand. Problematic shots will be magnified on the projector. As long as your camera resolution is 1280x720 and above, you shouldn't have a problem. But like many things, sometimes more is better.

Your biggest limitation is going to be the projector technology. The highest resolution projector (1080) is still going to be about the equivalent of 2 megapixels. So your 5 megapixel camera is producing images that have finer detail than your projectors imaging chip.

Here is a quote from another website...

What is resolution?

A projector's resolution (or more precisely, its "native resolution") is simply the number of pixels that it has available to create an image. The higher the resolution of a projector, the more pixels it has.

Projector resolution is designated with two numbers, such as "1280x720." The first number indicates how many pixels there are in each horizontal row, and the second number is how many pixels make up each vertical column. If you were to multiply the two numbers, you would end up with the total number of pixels on the display device.

Until digital technology gets finer, the only projectors capable of the kind of resolution you are looking for are the CRT units. Big, heavy, expensive and nowhere near the brightness of digital. But an image projected on a CRT is as close to film as you can get right now.

Think of it this way. Your camera is taking pictures with fine-grained sand. Your projector is recreating them with pea-gravel. Not the best of analogies, but the point is there.

regular guy:

Are your picture settings in the camera such that you are taking the highest resolution possible with the least amount of compression? What are they set at? Also, how are you displaying the pictures on the projector (computer, jpg on DVD, etc)?

Hello,

I have a 720p projector and am now doing slide shows for the family with photos from my Canon Powershot 5.1 megapixel camera.

On a 84 inch screen, the photos look good. But I had hoped sharper.

My questions:

For the photos to look better, would I need to get a new camera with 7, 8, 9, 10 megapixels?? Would that make the difference???

Or would I need to upgrade projector to 1080p to get better results?????

Or would I need to go to 1080p AND a 7,8,9, 10+??? megapixel camera???

Or lastly, do I need a better camera (i.e. better lense/brand)????

Sorry for the naive questions, but I really don't know.

Thanks in advance!1. Your Canon Powershot (model = ?) 5.1 pixel camera is a very good camera, capable of very good pictures. The Canon Powershot cameras are some of the very best, depending on the model.

2. Your 1280 x 720 pixel projector will only display 960 x 720 pixels of the camera's picture, since the format of your digital camera is 4:3 and not 16:9. Therefore you will only be looking at a 691,200 pixel picture. Since the camera's picture will be down-scaled to the lower resolution, the software that does this scaling is very important. The picture should be extremely sharp, if the right software scaling routine is used.

3. If you had a 1080p projector, you would be looking at a 1440 x 1080 picture (= 1,555,200 pixels = 1/5 of the camera resolution). The sharpness of the picture will still depend on the software used to down-scale the camera picture (from 5 megapixels to 2 megapixels).

4. As Davinleeds said, if the picture isn't sharp to start with, it will look even worse on your projector, it will magnify any defects as well as the picture size. Do the pictures look sharp on a computer monitor?. If the pictures look bad on your 720p projector, they will probably look even worse on a 1080p one.

The bottom line is that if the pictures are sharp to begin with, and if the software used to down-scale them to the projector format is good, then they should look very good on your 720p projector and even better on a 1080p one. Your problem is not the camera's fault (unless you have a defective one).

Since you didn't tell us what your camera model is, how you are displaying the pictures on your projector, and what the pictures look like on your computer monitor, we really can't provide any additional help for your problem. Even my old 2 megapixel Canon camera pictures look very good when projected on a 540p or 720p projector.

IndianaGeorge has a very good point too. If you are not saving the pictures at the camera's maximum 5.1 megapixel (large - fine) resolution, the pictures won't look good either, regardless of the other factors I mentioned.

Thanks for the replies.

1. My camera model is Canon Powershot S50. It is 5.1 megapix I think. Small and black. Bought it a few years ago.

2. I ALWAYS select "large-fine pictures", which shows 2592x1944.

3. My pictures look quite good (very sharp) on my modest computer monitor.

I save my pictures onto my new PS3 Playstation. Then I select 720p on the playstation menu to match my 720p projector through HDMI.

Pictures look good. But I thought they still should be sharper! Maybe an 84 inch screen is too much?
Anyway, you make a good point. My pictures are always 4x3, not 16x9 format. I guess my picture is way too big for the amount of pixels available for showing. A 1080p would help considerably????

I am not sure what you mean by the "software to downscale." I simply take the pictures from the camera (compact flashcard) and insert into PS3 Playstation. Save files. View files. The files are always JPEG.

What I gather from the advice above is the following:

1. My camera is good enough. Photos must be ALWAYS in strict focus!
I must admit, however, that I don't carry a tripod, so my focus is not always so precise. But I will remember this point. Maybe a better camera would help??? Any suggestions???
Also, more than 5 megapixels WOULD BE OF NO HELP, since my projector can't even handle 5 megapixels. A better lense, or a better PHOTOGRAPHER would be more important. :-)

2. Moving up to 1080p would help, all things considered equal. More pixels on the projector to handle the photos.

Correct?? Very confusing stuff for a regular guy. But I want to thank you again!

regular guy -- I just noticed that you have a PE7700 (720p) projector. I have the MT700 projector which is the Toshiba OEM version of that model. So, you should be able to see nice sharp pictures from your camera.