New member introduction

I hope you change your mind Steven.
Resolution is everything.
One Sony camera point at shoot camera is 16 X 50 the other Nikon is 20 X 60.
All photos are taken on the highest resolution passable most times.
My Ti300 Fluke 60hz infrared camera has 5 million mega pixels.

My first Cannon point and shoot camera for my construction company photos was 5 mp and that was in 2001. A long time ago.

Image resolution is paramount to me.
I want the ability to be able to capture an opening the size of a pencil eraser from 100 feet and execute the best possible resolution prior the image pixelating.
I take about 240 photos on an average home. I will go through each one to extract defect definition, zoom, snip, edit with narratives add arrows or circles to point out the defect and place it in the report.
It takes me 4 to 6 hours at times to build a report. After 5 years the time to inspect and report, including post inspection reviews, has not changed much but the product and service is more defined with the end result being much better.

Best regards.
Call me if you wish to peruse an idea that might benefit you as well as I.
I get many many calls and would like to have someone on-board.

I take everything at FULL HiRes (16MP+), and then after my report is complete and sent off, I resize to a smaller size and then file everything away on an external HD. This allows me to zoom in to see a gnat’s ball hairs if necessary. You would be surprised how often you do just that when reviewing your photos on a desktop monitor. The “in the field” guys have no clue what they are overlooking in their pics. Not everything is evident in the field, aka… “Hiding in plain site”.

Thanks guys,

Your feedback is welcome and it just so happen this week, when writing a report and looking at a pic of the top of a patio door with wood siding where the opening between the siding and the drip cap was closed by caulking, as it happen often, I realized I haven’t any pics of the windows top, to check if the same condition exist (and that can’t be seen from the ground).

By zooming in on the patio door pic, I’ve been able to see the same thing on a nearby window, but barely, and a higher resolution pic would have been better.

Mr Young, I’ll contact you…

Steve, the lowest setting on the Optio is not the lowest quality. the 3M setting (2048x1536 pixels) is actually not the lowest either. You can go lower to 640x480.

The quality is defined by the amount of light you let into the sensor. Irrespective of whether you run the full 16Mp or throttle the sensor down to 2Mp, it is, as with film and dSLR the ISO rating that controls the light.

If you have sufficient light, taking the shot at 2Mp and ISO 250 will give you way better photos. This is because the sensor has less noise and more light, and therefore can image better,

A good explanation of this can be found here

Thanks for the explanation, I don’t know squat about photography!

I assume one must go out of the “Auto” mode and into the manual settings to change the ISO rating, which had to be choosen for each luminosity condition, right?

In the real-world use of an inspection, where the light conditions change from pic to pic, it doesn’t seems really practical so if let in “Auto” mode, it must at least be better to have the higher possible resolution, isn’t? If I understand it correctly, pics won’t be “clearer” but it will be possible to zoom them in without loosing too much details, like it happen when you zoom too much and see the “grain” or pixels (I probably didn’t use the right terminology!)…

Thats the logical thought pattern Steve, but with ccd sensor technology it doesn’t work that way. Again that post I linked to explains it very well. To paraprhrase, if you have a physically small sensor (height x width x thickness) Then more pixels does not necessarily better photos. You will get more noise, and therefore more “graining” when you zoom in. That’s why you optio at 16Mp will take better pictures than a phone at 20-40 Mp, but a worse photo than a Nikon at 5Mp. The size of the raw image is irrelevant.

Thats the logical thought pattern Steve, but with ccd sensor technology it doesn’t work that way. Again that post I linked to explains it very well. To paraprhrase, if you have a physically small sensor (height x width x thickness) Then more pixels does not necessarily better photos. You will get more noise, and therefore more “graining” when you zoom in. That’s why your optio at 16Mp will take better pictures than a phone at 20-40 Mp, but a worse photo than a Nikon at 5Mp. The size of the raw image is irrelevant.