Photo Resolution
The difference from a grainy picture to a clear picture are only a few clicks away. Do you want to see every detail with a clear picture or just want to see what is on the ground? Are you tracking an award-winning buck or just need to count how many pigs are in your trap? Let’s take a look at your photo resolution.
Let’s first discuss the difference between 3, 5 or 8 Megapixels (MP). This is the size of photo that is saved to your SD card. A megapixel is equal to 1 million pixels. A 3 MP photo will comprise of 3 million pixels and put the photo together. An 8 MP photo has 8 million pixels and makes the photo look a lot clearer with more definition.
When the camera takes a photo, it saves it to the size set (3, 5 or 8 MP) onto the SD card then compresses the photo down to 40-80 Kilobytes (KB) for transmitting it through the local carrier. A KB is equal to about 1 thousand pixels (or bytes). So now the picture is made even smaller and grainy with only 40-80 thousand pixels from the 3, 5 or 8 million originally.
When you receive the photo on your phone as an MMS message, through the app or on the website, it is actually around the 40-80 KB range and why they appear to be grainy.
This is good for 95% of our viewers that are trying to see what is on the ground. Let’s talk about the other 5% that want to see much better, higher quality photos.
Megapixels
The best photos are the ones saved at 8 MP onto the SD card. Not everyone has the opportunity to pull their SD card and check it regularly. Since we are in the new digital age and everything is now being sent to your mobile device, we want to see better quality photos as they come in. When you use the website, you can always download the photo as High Resolution. Just select the photo you want to get a better view of and then request a High Res photo. Now you will have a high-quality photo with more definition.
Thumbnail Size
The last thing you can do is to change the thumbnail size of your photo from normal to large. This will change it from the normal 640×480 size to a nice 1280×960 photo. These photos will come in clear with a lot of definition. Be wary that when you do this, it requires more data to transfer and you could go over the limit.
Here is an example of the Normal Thumbnail size versus the Large Thumbnail size. The Normal Thumbnail (top) is saved at 49 KB where the Large Thumbnail (bottom) is saved at 921 KB. Notice the image information strip at the bottom of the photo, the normal thumbnail size is larger than the large thumbnail size which will make it easier to identify between the two. These photos do not show a true representation of what you will see on your mobile device.
