Megapixel Question

cT3i

Hi there. I have what very well may be a dumb question, but I'm stumped, so I'm gonna ask it anyway.

I'm taking photos of indoor volleyball. I've got the camera set to the highest quality (L, 18M 5184x3456). Can anyone tell me why, when I get them into my computer, they're showing as 7.6MP? Do I just not know what that means (totally possible!)?

Photos were shot at 1/500, 55mm.

They came out a little fuzzy, which I now think is because I had the ISO set to auto and it was pushed way up. I can test that next time. But that MP thing is bizarre to me.

Any other tips for indoor sports would be appreciated. I've had this camera a few years now and even after multiple books and even classes, well, here I am. Thank you!!

bruto

It may be that the program you're using downsizes the image for display. Try going to Windows Explorer (assuming windows is your OS) and right click on a file, to get its properties. Go to the "details" pane, and it should give you some of the EXIF information for the file, including its actual pixel count.

You can also open it in other programs that allow access to EXIF, and find out all the information on the file. The freeware programs Irfanview and Faststone Image Viewer both do this in varying degrees. Irfan's information is quite complete. Faststone has more features for exposure correction, and its display of JPG files is nice and sharp. If for some reason the file information does not show the correct pixel count, then I suspect there's some error in the setting of the camera, or some fault, or some issue with the manner in which they're being saved.

I don't know how Canons do some of their things, but if you have and need Auto ISO, check to see if there's a menu setting in which you can set the highest value it goes to. You can do this on a Nikon, making sure that it does not bump up to the highest setting.