Photo resolution

I’ve been posting photos here, in 800x600 resolution. But, generally, I’m not over the moon with the clarity and resolution of what I see on the screen. Am I being unrealistic though?

Now, I am not the best photographer, and I don’t have the best equipment (although, it is OK), and I’m not currently being too prudent about my setup (yeah, I should get the tripod out….), but I’d still like to briefly contemplate what I can expect…

What am I looking for? Well, is it unreasonable of me to expect nice definition of the imprints on the pencils, or to have some view of what the woodgrain looks like - all from an 800x600 picture?

The theory

My basic theory to examine is, at 800x600, for a maybe 150mm (yeah, I should really go measure) pencil, what is the dpi I will get, and how does that relate to the length of the point, and the width of the imprint letters? If I’m only getting say 8 pixels per letter, resolution is not going to be good enough. If I’m only getting 10 pixels across the width of the pencil, you are not going to get a good view of the wood grain. Let’s do some math…

The math

At 800 pixels wide, and a pencil at 150mm, we get are getting around 53 pixesl/cm (and, yes, I’m mixing up my measurement systems in this post). Now, we need to know the size of an imprint character, and the visible size of the exposed wood…

and then…

And then, it came time to post a new entry with a new photo. I grabbed the tripod, and my 35mm f1.8 prime lens and looked up which apeture was the sharpest for that lens… and on we move.

Maybe I’ll do the math one day. Maybe I’ll research and work out if it is best to shoot at the final resolution I desire (that is, take the shot and crop to 800x600), or should I shoot a maximum resolution and then downsample… that will be a fun topic to research.