How high a printing resolution/dpi can this camera offer?

Hi Lisa,

First of all, the DPI of a photo (usually actually PPI, but we'll get to that in a minute) is a value that's entirely independent of the camera used to produce the photo. Your Olympus can produce photos that are 1,000,000DPI if it wants to.

Here's how it works: your camera creates an image that is a certain number of pixels wide by a certain number of pixels tall. For example, your Olympus produces images that are probably about 2048 x 1536 pixels. Once you've downloaded an image from the camera to your computer, you can use any reasonably advanced image editing program (say... Adobe Photoshop) to set the photo's PPI (pixels per inch) value. This is also commonly referred to as DPI (dots per inch).

You can set the PPI to any value, but when doing so you should bear in mind that the higher the PPI is, the smaller the print size will be. To get the print size at any given PPI setting, all you have to do is divide each pixel dimension by the PPI value. So, let's say you set the PPI of a photo from your Olympus to 300 (standard print resolution). To get the print size of that photo, you would divide 2048 (the width in pixels) by 300 and then divide 1536 (the height in pixels) by 300 as well. 2048 / 300 = 6.82, and 1536 / 300 = 5.12, so your photo will print at 6.82" x 5.12".

So, if you set the PPI lower, the print size will be bigger. And, conversely, if you set the PPI higher (like your desired 360PPI) the print size will be smaller. However, bear in mind that you can only go as low as about 200 or 180PPI before you start to get noticeable pixelation in the print image.

The CyberShot R1 is a 10 megapixel camera, so at 300PPI it can print images that are 12.91" x 8.64". At your desired 360PPI setting, it can produce images that are 10.75" x 7.2".

Hopefully this response will give you a clearer idea of how DPI/PPI work in relation to digital images. If I've muddled things up for you, let me know and I'll try to clarify it. Good luck!