Were my photos resized?..

JustAskin · Nov 23, 2017

Hi,

Perhaps you can help me solve a mystery with a Sony camera...

I've received photos from a photographer, and they were quite low resolution/size (2768 x 1848) - I wasn't happy with the quality and also it surprised me to get such a low res from a professional photographer.

I told him he probably used the wrong setting and shot low res. After a lot of discussions, he gave me an "uncompressed version" of the photos, the resolution of them was 5066 x 3382

I didn't notice any change in the quality, and I started to research, and found out in the photo tag that it was taken with Sony ILCE-7SM2 - when I looked on the specs of this camera here , I saw several photo sizes listed for this camera - but 5066 x 3382 is not one of them....

Is it possible that he just resized the low resolution photos?.. I mean, I know it's possible technically, but I wouldn't want to blame him without being 100% sure - is the spec of the camera enough to prove it, or do such cameras can also shoot in custom sizes? Any other hard evidence I can look for?

Thanks

ClickAddict · Nov 23, 2017

He may have cropped it in editing. Take a 1000X1000 (fictitious numbers) photo of you, your dog and large building in background. Decides to cut out most of the building... results in 1000X500. You look up camera it says it only shoots in 1000X1000 or 2000X2000 and wonder why he has 1000X500.

As for quality... that's another problem. you can have very high resolution photos, but if there was camera shake / missed focus / bad exposure..... you will have poor quality.

JustAskin · Nov 23, 2017

Thanks - a few clarifications:
1) It is not one photo, they are ~400 photos all in the same size/resolution (So unlikely all were cropped)
2) The end size/resolution I got was actually higher than any spec that this camera can take - so cropping is not even an option - what I suspect is that because I complained on a low resolution he just resized that photos upwards...

The question is - can this camera take photos of 5066 x 3382 ?

astroNikon · Nov 23, 2017

Generally as a photographer you do not provide a full size image to a customer.

First of all 400 photos would be gigantic. For instance a full size image may be 24mb in size, so that would require 9,600 mb or 9.6 gigabytes

Thus generally a photographer provides a low res image for review. These are generally can be sent by email whereas a full size image may be too big for many email systems.

This camera though has a lower resolution than many current Full Frame camera

But keep in mind the real question is how were the photos "post processed" which could create the larger file sizes than what you think the camera may be able to do.

Specs of a SONY 7S II 12.2 megapixel camera

RECORDING FORMAT (STILL IMAGES)
JPEG (DCF Ver. 2.0, Exif ver. 2.3, MPF baseline compliant), RAW (Sony ARW 2.3 format)

IMAGE SIZE (PIXELS), 3:2
35 mm full frame L: 4240 x 2832 (12M), M: 2768 x 1848 (5.1M), S: 2128 x 1416 (3.0M), APS-C L: 2768 x 1848 (5.1M), M: 2128 x 1416 (3.0M), S: 1376 x 920 (1.3M)

IMAGE SIZE (PIXELS), 16:9
35 mm full frame L: 4240 x 2384 (10M), M: 2768 x 1560 (4.3M), S: 2128 x 1200 (2.6M), APS-C L: 2768 x 1560 (4.3M), M: 2128 x 1200 (2.6M), S: 1376 x 776 (1.1M)

IMAGE SIZE (PIXELS), SWEEP PANORAMA
Wide: Horizontal 12416 x 1856 (23M), vertical 5536 x 2160 (12M), Standard: Horizontal 8192 x 1856 (15M), vertical 3872 x 2160 (8.4M)

JustAskin · Nov 23, 2017

Thanks astroNikon - by your answer and clickAddict's answer I understand I may have not explained myself well.

I'm not complaining about getting low size photos - because in the end he did send me the supposedly full size photos - TIF files at the size of 5066 x 3382 pixels each - and indeed it all weighed ~9GB (not terabyte)

What I suspect that the original photos were taken at a much lower setting (i.e. 2768 x 1848) and because I told him that is an unacceptable size - he just resized the photos by using photoshop or similar.

Again, the question is very simple: Can Sony ILCE-7SM2 take photos of 5066 x 3382 ?
If the answer is NO, then it means he just manipulated the photos to technically make them appear of a higher size/resolution
if the answer is YES, then perhaps indeed the originals were of that size.

astroNikon · Nov 23, 2017

JustAskin said:
Again, the question is very simple: Can Sony ILCE-7SM2 take photos of 5066 x 3382 ?
If the answer is NO, then it means he just manipulated the photos to technically make them appear of a higher size/resolution
if the answer is YES, then perhaps indeed the originals were of that size.

Well, it all depends.
If you look at the specs it depends upon "how" he took the image ....

IMAGE SIZE (PIXELS), 3:2
35 mm full frame L: 4240 x 2832 (12M)

versus

IMAGE SIZE (PIXELS), SWEEP PANORAMA
Wide: Horizontal 12416 x 1856 (23M)

clearly, the answer is YES, but a "depends how he took the image"

Plus you don't understand post processing. The size of a RAW file, versus JPEG, versus TIFF can all be different. The image is originally saved in the camera as a RAW file, for example. Then Exported after tweaking/modifying, etc into TIFF / JPEG etc. PLUS with different horizontal and vertical pixel counts.

So your answer is not a clear Yes/No.

Ysarex · Nov 23, 2017

astroNikon said:
Generally as a photographer you do not provide a full size image to a customer.

First of all 400 photos would be gigantic. For instance a full size image may be 24mb in size, so that would require 9,600 mb or 9.6 terabytes

Little problem with your math there. 400 image files at 24mb each will not = 9.6 terabytes. It wouldn't even be close to 1 terabyte.

Joe

astroNikon said:
Thus generally a photographer provides a low res image for review. These are generally can be sent by email whereas a full size image may be too big for many email systems.

This camera though has a lower resolution than many current Full Frame camera

But keep in mind the real question is how were the photos "post processed" which could create the larger file sizes than what you think the camera may be able to do.

Specs of a SONY 7S II 12.2 megapixel camera

RECORDING FORMAT (STILL IMAGES)
JPEG (DCF Ver. 2.0, Exif ver. 2.3, MPF baseline compliant), RAW (Sony ARW 2.3 format)

IMAGE SIZE (PIXELS), 3:2
35 mm full frame L: 4240 x 2832 (12M), M: 2768 x 1848 (5.1M), S: 2128 x 1416 (3.0M), APS-C L: 2768 x 1848 (5.1M), M: 2128 x 1416 (3.0M), S: 1376 x 920 (1.3M)

IMAGE SIZE (PIXELS), 16:9
35 mm full frame L: 4240 x 2384 (10M), M: 2768 x 1560 (4.3M), S: 2128 x 1200 (2.6M), APS-C L: 2768 x 1560 (4.3M), M: 2128 x 1200 (2.6M), S: 1376 x 776 (1.1M)

IMAGE SIZE (PIXELS), SWEEP PANORAMA
Wide: Horizontal 12416 x 1856 (23M), vertical 5536 x 2160 (12M), Standard: Horizontal 8192 x 1856 (15M), vertical 3872 x 2160 (8.4M)

astroNikon · Nov 23, 2017

yup, typo of gigabytes.

Ysarex · Nov 23, 2017

JustAskin said:
Thanks astroNikon - by your answer and clickAddict's answer I understand I may have not explained myself well.

I'm not complaining about getting low size photos - because in the end he did send me the supposedly full size photos - TIF files at the size of 5066 x 3382 pixels each - and indeed it all weighed ~9GB (not terabyte)

What I suspect that the original photos were taken at a much lower setting (i.e. 2768 x 1848) and because I told him that is an unacceptable size - he just resized the photos by using photoshop or similar.

Again, the question is very simple: Can Sony ILCE-7SM2 take photos of 5066 x 3382 ?

The answer is NO. The max resolution of that camera is 4240 x 2832.

JustAskin said:
If the answer is NO, then it means he just manipulated the photos to technically make them appear of a higher size/resolution

Correct.

JustAskin said:
if the answer is YES, then perhaps indeed the originals were of that size.

It's a fair assumption that the originals were 4240 x 2832. Whether he generated the 5066 X 3382 from the originals or from the versions he gave you remains unknown.

Joe

JustAskin · Nov 23, 2017

astroNikon - I admit I'm no expert (and thanks for explaining)
But, while the Panorama size caught my attention at first, I don't think it can be that - because the max height there (1856) is much lower than what I got (3382) and also it can be clearly seen that all photos are not panorama photos.
It seems to me that the max non-panorma image size this camera can take is 4240 x 2832 and this is why I suspected that these 5066 x 3382 images were manipulated.

As for post processing, I understand that the resulting image can go through a lot of changes - but my assumption is that is an image is let's say 1000 x 1000 (just for round numbers sake..) the photographer has no good reason to scale it up to 2000 x 2000 unless they are trying to prove their photos were taken at a higher resolution/size - isn't that the case?

For example, if I have an old camera that can only take 4MP photos - and the photographer would hand me 12MP photos - what's the use case of that?

astroNikon · Nov 23, 2017

JustAskin said:
astroNikon - I admit I'm no expert (and thanks for explaining)
But, while the Panorama size caught my attention at first, I don't think it can be that - because the max height there (1856) is much lower than what I got (3382) and also it can be clearly seen that all photos are not panorama photos.
It seems to me that the max non-panorma image size this camera can take is 4240 x 2832 and this is why I suspected that these 5066 x 3382 images were manipulated.

As for post processing, I understand that the resulting image can go through a lot of changes - but my assumption is that is an image is let's say 1000 x 1000 (just for round numbers sake..) the photographer has no good reason to scale it up to 2000 x 2000 unless they are trying to prove their photos were taken at a higher resolution/size - isn't that the case?

For example, if I have an old camera that can only take 4MP photos - and the photographer would hand me 12MP photos - what's the use case of that?

Keep in mind that we have NOT seen any of the original or newer photos that he has sent you.
Thus we can only speculate.

Now if you want to post those photos .. then that would give us much more information to work on rather than speculation.

Ysarex · Nov 23, 2017

JustAskin said:
astroNikon - I admit I'm no expert (and thanks for explaining)
But, while the Panorama size caught my attention at first, I don't think it can be that - because the max height there (1856) is much lower than what I got (3382) and also it can be clearly seen that all photos are not panorama photos.
It seems to me that the max non-panorma image size this camera can take is 4240 x 2832 and this is why I suspected that these 5066 x 3382 images were manipulated.

That is the logical conclusion.

JustAskin said:
As for post processing, I understand that the resulting image can go through a lot of changes - but my assumption is that is an image is let's say 1000 x 1000 (just for round numbers sake..) the photographer has no good reason to scale it up to 2000 x 2000 unless they are trying to prove their photos were taken at a higher resolution/size - isn't that the case?

Correct. As a general rule post processing steps do not upscale image resolution. It is possible, but the more likely case is that cropping reduces resolution.

Joe

JustAskin said:
For example, if I have an old camera that can only take 4MP photos - and the photographer would hand me 12MP photos - what's the use case of that?

JustAskin · Nov 23, 2017

Thanks Ysarex for the answers
astroNikon - As for the photos you can download one of them here
Let me know if you see anything odd..

Ysarex · Nov 23, 2017

JustAskin said:
Thanks Ysarex for the answers
astroNikon - As for the photos you can download one of them here
Let me know if you see anything odd..

Your TIFF file was processed using Adobe Lightroom from a camera original .ARW (Sony raw) file. Lightroom does have the capacity to upscale the image and that's likely where the resolution increase comes from. The camera original was 4240 x 2832.

Joe

ClickAddict · Nov 23, 2017

Are any of these photos composites? If I take a photo of you at 1000X1000 and one of your dog (1000X1000), open them both up in Photoshop and put them together in a new document of 2000X1000 without any loss of quality. That would be one way of increasing size, but you should know if they were composites, which you did not mention. (Similarly did he perhaps add some extra "sky" in the background over your head to give a better composition if he had shot it too tight?)