{"id":103230,"date":"2021-10-11T07:06:16","date_gmt":"2021-10-11T13:06:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=103230"},"modified":"2021-10-11T08:53:02","modified_gmt":"2021-10-11T14:53:02","slug":"singing-western-meadowlark-on-antelope-island","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2021\/10\/11\/singing-western-meadowlark-on-antelope-island\/","title":{"rendered":"Singing Western Meadowlark On Antelope Island"},"content":{"rendered":"

And my attempt to explain, and demonstrate, some of the effects of resolution on digital images.<\/p>\n

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1\/2500, f\/7.1, ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

For me there’s lots to like about an image like this one. I caught a nice singing pose, the meadowlark is in typical natural habitat for the species, I have a catch light in the eye, the bird is large in the frame and sharp – so sharp I chose to reduce my normal amount of sharpening during processing by 50%.<\/p>\n

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Lots of folks seem to be confused by what is meant by ‘resolution’ in digital photography. For example, I get many requests for image use for educational or conservation purposes. I’ll sometimes approve those requests (often requiring a reasonable licensing fee, depending on the situation) with the caveat that they can use the low resolution version of the image I have on my blog but I will not<\/span> send them a high resolution version of the image. Not ever. And they don’t understand why.<\/p>\n

So I thought this image would be an excellent candidate to use in an attempt to explain why. I’m going to use the catch light in the eye of this meadowlark to actually show the difference in resolution between the low res photo above and a high res version of the same photo.<\/p>\n

Resolution can be defined in several ways. One definition is “how many pixels are displayed per inch of an image” and another is “how much detail an image holds”. I’m going to try to demonstrate below what those words mean in the real world.<\/p>\n

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For reference, this is the uncropped, full frame version of the photo above. As you can see I cropped it very little by taking a thin slice off the left in order to make the bird slightly less centered.<\/p>\n

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When I post photos to my blog they’re always resized to only 900 pixels on the long side. At that size this is what the catch light in the eye of the meadowlark looks like when I enlarge it. Each tiny square is a single pixel so at this size the catch light consists of only 4 pixels. Those 4 pixels of varying shades of gray contain very little detail but the entire image looks just fine at this small size (about 9.25″ wide on a full sized screen).<\/p>\n

Printed or seen any larger than that and the low res image would look pixelated (another way of saying terrible). That’s why I feel relatively safe posting my images to my blog at only 900 pixels on the long side. If someone swiped an image that size, even an 8×10 print wouldn’t look good and anything larger would look progressively worse.<\/p>\n

But what about a high resolution version of the same image?<\/p>\n

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Here’s the same photo showing the meadowlark’s catch light at full resolution. Each pixel appears smaller and the eye is larger because there are so many pixels involved I had to zoom in closer to make each pixel large enough to be easily seen.<\/p>\n

In the low res version of the image the catch light consisted of only four pixels but in this high res version it consists of approximately 82 pixels of varying shades and colors (I counted them by zooming in even tighter). Obviously there’s much more detail (more pixels) in this catch light than in the low res version. If stolen the high res version of the entire image could be printed huge and still look very good.<\/p>\n

So if you aren’t a reputable publisher please don’t ask me for a high res version of one of my images, even if it’s for a cause I support like education or conservation. The answer will always be no because that’s the easiest way I know of to lose control of my own images..<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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Notes:<\/em><\/p>\n

Here’s a related way of explaining resolution using this same image:<\/em><\/p>\n