Pictures provide valuable documentation in scientific study. However, the amount, quality and accuracy of the data contained in an image varies based on the resolution of the camera used. High resolution pictures provide the best documentation in scientific photography.
What Is Resolution?
A digital image is made up of thousands or millions of individual dots of color, called pixels. A photograph with a resolution of 1280 x 800 is made up of 800 rows of 1280 pixels or just over a megapixel (a million pixels). Resolution is a measure of how many pixels an image contains. All else being equal, an image with a higher resolution, that is an image with more pixels, contains more information than an image with a lower resolution.
In scientific photography, more resolution is better. A higher resolution image show a subject in more detail and can reveal the subtle, fine features that a lower resolution picture wouldn't show. This is why, as a rule, scientific photography is best handled by cameras with high megapixel ratings.
Zooming Into The Image
You might be asking yourself if there is a reasonable limit to useful resolution. After all, the human eye has a finite limit to the detail it can perceive, so does it help to take pictures with features so fine they can't be seen with the naked eye? In a word, yes.
High resolution scientific photography allows a viewer to zoom into an image as though the subject were being put under a microscope. Try this on a typical consumer camera and the image quickly becomes blocky, but on a hyper-resolution image in the 24- to 72-megapixel range, viewers can blow up the image and still get a tremendously precise and accurate picture. It allows very careful examination of a specimen that may itself be long gone.
What About Close Ups?
In previous generations of photographic technology, researchers used close up photography to document the fine details of a subject. By taking many pictures at varying scales, they could accurately record a specimen. Does high resolution scientific photography eliminate the need for close ups? For that matter, could a researcher use a cheaper, lower resolution camera and use close up images to compensate for the lack of scalability of the images produced?
Close up photography and high resolution photography complement each other. Zoomed in images are still valuable, and when done in high resolution they can be zoomed in even more when viewed later. However what if a photographer neglects to do a close up of a particular part of the specimen? Researchers may not realize a particular detail is important at the time, and the specimen may be disposed of. With a high resolution photograph, they can still zoom in on neglected areas and examine them closely.
High resolution photography requires professional grade equipment, which is why many researchers choose to use commercial photographers to document their work.
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