Thread: Image resolution in cameras used on hunting trips

This important attribute — and likely so for many of us — is a camera’s ability to take high–resolution images of game animals at distance. The camera companies each market a variety of “superzoom” models that seem perfect for this, but for a prospective purchaser, can the resolution claims being made for each camera be backed up? There have been several threads here recently requesting information on the image resolution to be expected of particular cameras with a view to general suitability for game photography, and sometimes as a substitute for a spotting scope. The purpose of this thread is to try and answer just that one particular question; by quantifying the resolution of images taken at maximum zoom.

The specific attribute I’m keen to survey is:

whether each model of camera is actually making use of its maximum focal length setting; that at this setting the full resolution in the resulting image size is being utilized,

in other words whether the big numbers for zoom and image dimensions in the cameras we own are just for marketing to the unwary. Put in terms of something I’m hoping can be used to give a quantifiable figure–of–merit:

Does the image — one produced at maximum zoom and recorded at full image size — when closely inspected, appear to resolve detail down to the single pixel level?


The way I see it there is no point in stepping up say from a 20x zoom camera to 40x zoom if the image produced with the higher magnification instead has all four pixels in every block of 2x2 all the same colour as the equivalent single pixel would have been in the image produced by the lower zoom model of the same subject matter. After all, I can expand a cropped portion of an image to any size I want here at home on the PC. All this has achieved in such a 40x camera is added complexity, size and weight, and inevitably cost, for no actual gain in the resolution of the final image produced. It is easy to check too. Downsize an image by 50% in a photo editor without any re–sampling/interpolation and then restore back up to the original size, so artificially creating the above mentioned 2x2 blocks of identical pixels, then compare to the original. Has any meaningful resolution been lost?