Some of the photos I take, to get the subject large enough in the frame I have to use electronic zoom. I don’t have money for a nice zoom lens. I tried using an adapter for one of Dad’s zoom lenses but it sometimes gives me issues. So I use a 4x zoom - which basically cuts off 3/4 of my sensor then expands the picture to full size (I guess by some sort of averaging math to create the discarded pixels)

Is there anything I can do in post to get some of that resolution back - even if it made up. I am a Linux user, so a workflow in GIMP would be great, or any other Free/Libre software you might suggest?

  • Max@lemmy.world
    7·
    13 hours ago

    If you’re using a non-phone camera, I don’t think there’s any upsides to using digital zoom. Just take the photo full res (and raw if you can) and then do the cropping/zooming in gimp, etc. Then you have full control of the cropping, and you might even be able to use a better upscaling algorithm than the camera’s built in.

    This is not true on phones because when you zoom in digitally the phone does something called super-resolution imaging where it takes a whole sequence of photos and then stacks them to try and fill in the missing information. That tech hasn’t caught up to dedicated cameras yet.

    What camera are you using?

    • WasPentalive@lemmy.oneOPEnglish
      1·
      1 hour ago

      That is all great info - about how cell phone cameras have better goodies these days.

      I have a Canon EOS R50 with the kit lens (RF-S18-45mm F4.5-6.3 IS STM) I also inherited my dad’s Canon Digital Rebel with whatever lenses he had.

    • JohnnyCanuck
      4·
      12 hours ago

      You can do super resolution in post if you take multiple photos of a still subject. They do this in astrophotography.