Picture Quality

[INT]

I've used a Canon T2i with its kit lens for years for thousands of online product shoots on eBay and Amazon. How Much Picture Quality Gained with Full Frame Canon Verses T2i?

I have a large collection antique diaries and similar bound materials that I wish to place on my site for those interested in genealogy. As traditional flatbed scanners are not ideal and slow I will be constructing a DIY scanner using one or two cameras in conjunction with a "V" shaped book support platform and "V" shaped glass platen to keep the pages flat during the shoot.

I thinking of either buying Canon's replacement for the T2i or upgrading to a full frame camera. The materials with the largest surface areas I would be shooting would be antique newspapers which are generally larger than modern papers.

How much picture quality will be gained by using a full frame verses the equivalent of the T2i? Are the greater number of pixels worth the extra cost?

 

[Ross]

You might want to look at some of the m43 cameras that have a built-in hi-res mode.

"The camera captures multiple images by shifting the sensor and then combining these images into one large, high-resolution RAW (or JPG) file."

The High-Res Mode of the Olympus OM-D E-M1 Mark II - Chris Eyre-Walker Photography

The Hi-Res Mode is a special feature on select Olympus cameras. It allows you to shoot an up to 80MP image with a 20MP sensor. And today I'd like to dive a little more into the technology behind this mind-bending feature, specifically on the OM-D E-M1 Mark II.

chriseyrewalker.com

At the end of the day, I think it depends on your final use case. If you need the best possible image the better resolution hypothetically can be had from the camera with more megapixels

Hope this helps!

 

[thebestcpu]

Hi INT
I agree with @Ross that it depends on your final usage.
Keep in mind that the end resolution has to do with not just number of pixels yet the quality of the lens, using aperture with sufficient DOF yet not beyond where diffraction causes an issue, flatness of object being photographed, ISO level so noise is not the limiter, and low vibration relative to the shutter speed used.

That said, if you need to record the details of a very fine print then why not take the objects size and use 300 pixels per inch to know the minimum pixels needed in the camera.

Say you have a newspaper broadsheet (single page of) 16 inches x 24 inches (note I chose one that fits the typical aspect ratio of today's 35 mm sensors. For 300 ppi resolution you would need to capture 4800 pixels x 7200 pixels or a ~ 35 Mpix sensor with that aspect ratio. That's about double your Canon T2i

Hope that helps you get going on how to think about this
John Wheeler