[kevhamster]

Is there any way of getting the E71's camera to take a good quality picture?

It's supposed to be a 3MP camera.  But I've tried printing off standard 6x4 prints of pictures I've taken (in good lighting conditions), and yet the pictures are blurry will blotchy colouring - they look like they were taken on a poor quality VGA camera.

I've checked, and the camera is set to take pictures of the highest resolution available.  What I have noticed, is that a lot of the pictures come out as files which are less than 350KB in size, which seems a very small file size for a picture taken with 3MP resolution.

To compare, I've looked at some pictures taken on my LG Viewty, and they are all on average about 1.6MB in size.  As that is a 5MP camera, and working it back, pictures taken on a 3MP camera should come in at just under 1MB.

Seriously, my old Nokia 6630 from 5 years ago made much better quality prints with it's 1.3MP camera, and that just doesn't seem right.

[xbin]

I find the camera handy if I haven't got my Lumix with me, but the quality is ok. I knew from reviews the camera was not its strong point but I wasn't bothered.

As far as the size goes, you will find that there are indeed 3Mpixels in the resultant 'large' image but the files don't get much over half a meg in size. The jpeg compression is extremely vigorous and will undoubtedly contribute to a loss in image quality. They would have been better using a 1.3 sensor and the smallest compression!

[kevhamster]

So it's because of compression then?  This is something there should be options for - being able to lower the compression rate if you choose, acknowledging you will fill up your memory card more quickly.

I noticed a similar issue with my X6 as well before it died.

Having the data so heavily compressed makes it utterly pointless having the 3.2MP lens.  Some people like to print out their photos when they get a good one!

[xbin]

Yes. Normal jpeg compression reduces the size by approx. a half, so a 3 million pixel image will be roughly 1.5 mega bytes in actual file size. And that is what it is supposed to do. But the jpeg algorithm can be made to strip away lots more bits per pixel and this is when the quality starts to become affected. By compressing to just 1/6 or more as the E71 does then the result cannot possibly be good no matter how good the camera is.

So yes, its very odd that there is no way to alter the compression as on most high res digital cameras.