Print Size and camera and crop

Khaos

20D owners, what is the max print size you have found you can get that does not show any degradation in detail or color at no crop?

At what crop amount does quality go down noticably as to need you to drop the max print size.

digismile

I tried searching the threads from long ago, because I recall a post by Baldy (I'm pretty sure) about 20 x 30 enlargements he had done from a 10D (a car photo I think). He said the enlargements were outstanding.

The biggest I have done was 12 x 18 and it was very good. But the reason I wanted to find the post again is I seem to remember the discussion talked about why the print was so good and that it had to do with the printer's countinuous tone capabilities as opposed to dots on an inkjet... or something like that. He also compared this enlargement to other film enlargements where the grain becomes very noticable, etc.

I still suspect that the original image must still be very sharp. Maybe Baldy (or whomever I remember making this post last year) will pop by and give some feedback.:D

Brad

Baldy

Counterintuitively, the larger the print, the fewer the dots per inch you need. Shay had a great thread about why.

For that reason, EZ Prints (smugmug's print partner) runs its small printers at a max resolution of 300 dpi, the medium prints are 254 dpi, and the really large ones are 200 dpi.

For people who saw the digital versus of Star Wars Episode II on the big screen like I did, it was shocking to see a 1280x1024 projection look so good.

On an inkjet, where dithering is involved, you need lots of dpi, but on a continuous-tone printer like EZ Prints uses, you'd be hard pressed to notice the difference between a 100 dpi print and one with higher resolution.

In the last 1,000,000 prints smugmug has shipped, I'm not aware of a single complaint about resolution or artifacts. It's always about color or possibly unsharp mask (not enough of it).

Here's the car shot I took to a camera meeting of the bay area, where people scrutinized it up close and personal. Shot on a 10D with 320mm equivalent focal length hand-held, moving car, slightly less than 100 dpi (2917 pixels, 30" wide), JPEG compression 7:



No one who has seen it can see any evidence of artifacts. (The skin tones may be a bit dark and saturated, however.)

Sam

Khaos wrote:

20D owners, what is the max print size you have found you can get that does not show any degradation in detail or color at no crop?

At what crop amount does quality go down noticably as to need you to drop the max print size.

I am by far no expert on this, but that hasn't stoped from commenting yet. :

I think there is a lot more to this subject than just pixels, and dots per inch. I believe the quality, subject, type, color, exposure, sharpness, print method, paper, etc. will determine how large you can go. Also you can up res (increase the resolution) of your photo in PhotoShop, or use 3rd party software.

I have printed 2 photos from my lowly Rebel at 20"X30" and they look as good as the 8"X12" prints I had done at a local pro lab.

Sam