Largest print took by 10D

[cardigan1979]

What's the largest print anyone has attempted by a 10D ?

With 35mm I went up to 40" x30" without too much trouble I'm counting on my new 10D to at least equal 35mm film...

[Jeppe]

Nope.. sorry to crush your hope. But ther is not as much data in a 10D-file as in a 35mm.

[RichardtheSane]

In reality even a 1ds can't really equal good quality film such as fuji Velvia. My gadget bag has a 10D and my EOS 33(elan7) in it os if I find a scene that will look good blown up then I can shoot it on velvia.
:)

[BrettD]

I have recently joined the Digital age with a new 10D, (comming from a minolta 35mm film SLR) and am also wondering about this topic.

I saw a digital to film comparison here:
http://www.sphoto.com/techinfo/lakehenshaw.htm

This seems to show that even the 10D had more detail and smoother grain than the Provia 100 ASA film. The test seems fair, as the film was scanned with a 4000 dpi film scaner, giving a 19 MP image, and then the 10D was upscaled using bi-cubic. It still looks better than the film. Is there something I am missing in this test?

If anything the 10D is at a disadvantage, as it is pushing the limmits of the optics further due to it's cropping factor.

Brett D

[dshootist]

sooooo... then the question remains, how big can you go? let's say you've got a RAW file and you've used Canon software to set your color just right. how big can you go? biggest i've gotten on Large JPG Fine is 8" x 10" but there's still some "grain" going on.

[nucki]

I think, just try it! take a picture with the highest quality and then develop them in different formats. I think its not that expensive in that times and it would be interesting for us :-)

regards
Peter

[leony]

Here's the original, and crop of the face from unmodified 10D file, then crop from the same file enlarged to be printed as 20"x30", and after USM @ 200, 1, 0.

http://pegasus.rutgers.edu/~leonidy/forum/IMG_0007.jpg
http://pegasus.rutgers.edu/~leonidy/forum/IMG_0007a.jpg
http://pegasus.rutgers.edu/~leonidy/forum/IMG_0007b.jpg
http://pegasus.rutgers.edu/~leonidy/forum/IMG_0007c.jpg


Shot @ ISO 100.

[mattchase]

I can partially answer this...at least give you some idea of what you can expect. These three images are actually from my D60, so I would expect the 10D to be slightly better.

The first example is a panoramic I shot in Alaska. I took about 12 seperate vertical exposures, and combined them in Photoshop. I printed this image on a Lightjet 5000, glossy photo paper, at about 20"x40". The color, sharpness, and detail are very good...as expected since it was so many images combined.

Then I made a print for my wall, a semi-macro shot looking nearly straight up the face of a large rock. This is printed at about 62"x90" (yes, 5 feet x 7.5 feet), done with an Epson 1270. It looks fabulous...but, once again, there is a bit of a catch. It was printed on textured fine art paper, not glossy photo paper (25 seperate 13"x19" sheets - was a pain putting it together!). However, it is clean and smooth, and both the rock and the moss growing all over the rock show some pretty good detail, even with as much as it was enlarged. There is also a small patch of clear blue sky that shows zero artifacting (it was shot as a JPG). The only area lacking is sharpness, which I feel is understandable - and even the sharpness is still pretty good. At about 5 feet away, you would probably not notice the loss of sharpness (and viewing distance on a print this large would usually be more like 10-20 feet). This print actually surprised me in how well the detail held. To it's credit, I used Genuine Fractals for the interpolation.

Finally, the best answer I can currently give. I had a 16"x24" (full frame) print made on a Lightjet 5000. It was shot at ISO 200, 1/25th second at f5.6, handheld (stupid heavy Bogen tripods...), on an overcast day, under complete tree cover in the forests of Alaska. Not the best of conditions...so it could be sharper, which was my fault for not having my tripod handy, but it is still pretty sharp. DOF does fall off a bit, again due to the aperture and not having my tripod so I could close down. But even given all of that, the print looks great, and most viewers would not notice these imperfections. Color and detail are both very good. And I have since purchased a lightweight travel tripod that now goes most everywhere my camera goes.

One of these days I will get a larger print made from one of my files. I will report back when I do, and let you know how it looks. Oh, and as RichardtheSane pointed out, film does still have it's place. For those shots I think are worth it, I always have my Mamiya medium format camera handy with a good ISO 100 film loaded in it. I used to carry a 4x5 with me, but got tired of never using it. My 10D (and previously D60) is used for about 98% of my shooting.

[mjordan]

While it's not a 10D, another photographer I know regularly did 20x30 prints from his G2 that looked pretty good. These were studio shots where he could control the light.

I think the limiting factor is not going to be 35mm or the number of pixles of information in the digital file... it's going to be how well it's exposed and the quality of the glass that you shoot through. I think lack of perfect exposure and poor glass will limit your size long before you run out of pixles.

Also, the viewing distance has a lot to do with how good the final out come looks. They do bill board pictures with 35mm... but you aren't viewing them from arm's distance either.

Mike

[dshootist]

why not purchase a digital back for your Mamiya and have the best of both worlds plus the ability to print monster digital files? someday down the line, when digital backs have hit the 100-mega pixel mark, I may move to a medium format as well. personally, I'm hoping for a tech breakthrough that allows for a medium format CMOS to fit in a 35mm body. having sunk the $$$ into my 10D already, I'll just use what's available for now.

I am currently shooting my son at his sports activities and using a 10D. while the speed could be a couple of frames faster, color and sharpness are way more than adequate. however, the actual reasoning behind my enlargement inquiry is in the realm of portrait photography. I've been asked to shoot a neighbor's daughter for her senior portraits and would like to offer them a range for enlargements that's suitable for framing (i.e. larger than 18 x 22). if not, then 18 x 22 is what they get. either way, she'll most likely want wallets and an 8 x 10 or three. the conditions of the location will vary, as she is into a variety of sports, so lighting may be left more to luck and environment than technology. my lens set up is a 35-80mm and a 75-300mm.

[mattchase]

DShootist, the company I work for does have a Mamiya 645 AFD and Kodak pro back. Very nice system, albeit a bit buggy still. Not sure if it's the camera or the back, but both will be going in for servicing soon anyways (we have had them for over a year and have yet to send them in for anything).

For your portrait shoot, the 10D will do fine at most any size print they want. The nice thing about portraits, and especially women's portraits, is it is often EXPECTED that the image will be a tad soft. We use a softar filter on most of the portraits we do, even for a lot of the guys to help smooth out wrinkles and stubble. It's that glamorous perfectly smooth glowing skin thing...just be carefull not to overdo it. Out of focus is not the same as soft. Personally, I prefer to add a touch of softness in Photoshop after the fact instead of using a filter during the shoot...but that's just me.

Mjordan, that reminded me...The company I work for just did a billboard for a client. It consisted of a base image of a new community shot with a 1Ds from a lift, and then had a number of other items composited into that base image (sky, homes, people, pets, flowers, etc). All of the composited items were shot with either a 1Ds or 10D. The billboard is directly adjacent to the (not quite built) freeway, so when driving past it you get within about 75 feet (if not less). The billboard size is 14'x48', with about 2/3rds of it being used up by the image and it looks great (other 1/3rd of the board is text).

But I would bet up close, it doesn't look quite so good.

Now, can anyone in Las Vegas find this billboard? ;)

[Webster]

BrettD wrote:
I saw a digital to film comparison here:
http://www.sphoto.com/techinfo/lakehenshaw.htm

This seems to show that even the 10D had more detail and smoother grain than the Provia 100 ASA film. The test seems fair, as the film was scanned with a 4000 dpi film scaner, giving a 19 MP image, and then the 10D was upscaled using bi-cubic. It still looks better than the film. Is there something I am missing in this test?



I would think that a really fair test of digital vs film would be digital printed from a file and film printed optically. If you scan the film then you're throwing away a lot of its quality. The results could not be easily shown on the web, but that's not really relevent to the issue of which prints better at large size.

[D60DIETER]

Hi to everyone,

concerning this topic I can just speak of my experience. 13"*19" (A3+) printed with an EPSON 1290 is excellent. After a good work in PS 20" to 30" is very well (lab printed), if you look at it from normal distance.

The more you magnify, the more problems occure. So for those 20"*30" the basic material must be excellent (Tripod, Metering, Mirrorprerelease,...and so on).

Do not compare it with the possibilities of a 35mm film. There is much more information in it.

Dieter

[Jeppe]

RichardtheSane wrote:
In reality even a 1ds can't really equal good quality film such as fuji Velvia. My gadget bag has a 10D and my EOS 33(elan7) in it os if I find a scene that will look good blown up then I can shoot it on velvia.
:)

I have to disagree. I have seen testshots with Velvia 50 vs 1Ds, and it seems to me that the 1Ds have a higher resolving power.

[leony]

There was a guy who did a test a little while ago - he shot Velvia on Pentax 67 vs. EOS 1Ds. He had the crome 6x7 drum scanned, and when he pulled up the two files, even though the scanned one was larger in size, the one from 1Ds had more detail!!!

The article
http://luminous-landscape.com/reviews/shootout.shtml


If you are doing an INK-JET print, you don't need 300 dpi image resolution. Why? because the printer converts each pixel in to 3 (or 6 for printers that use 6 inks) - Cyan, Magenta, Yellow.

I've found that my Canon S520 (CMYK) prints the same looking image whether the file was resized to 300 dpi or 180 dpi. 150 is too low.

Add to this that you can easily DOUBLE the size in Photoshop by using a stair interpolation of 110% without any loss of quality!

[HoodedOne]

In a article in the february edition of the german photo magazine (foto magazine), they printed the 5 MP image of a Minolta Dimage 7Hi to the incredible size of 50 x 70 cm. (they used RAW files)

So with a 6 Mp image from the 10D this should also be possible, maybe it´s possible to stretch it furter to 60 x 80.

But most important, you are only limited by your imagination :)

cheers

[misaj*]

Before I buy 10D, i regulary use Canon G2 for bilboards and nobody complains. Of coure, that's in Eastern Europe, but we have some standards too.

What is most important is light and content. Everyithing else is less visible.

And with 10D, 30x40 cm is bigger photo i have done, on Agfa Dlab2 (it's similar to Fuji Frontera, but made in Germany) and it's look very good and sharp.

[RichardtheSane]

I would think that a really fair test of digital vs film would be digital printed from a file and film printed optically. If you scan the film then you're throwing away a lot of its quality. The results could not be easily shown on the web, but that's not really relevent to the issue of which prints better at large size.

That is exactly what I was referring to.
In my opinion there is no 'better' format. Both digital and film have their place in the photography world - you just have to choose the right format (and processing) for you requirements.
All the comparisons between digital and film that I have seen end up with the transparency being scanned - which is totally wrong if you are doing a true comparison.

My original statement was a little broad, I apologise for not being clearer on what I meant by it.

:)

[cardigan1979]

Thanks very much for all your replies, this is something I have debaited over in my mind for afew month now.

I shoot sports photography mainly football (soccer for those in the US). I sold a print 40" x 30" full frame on Fuji Superia 800 and the quality was there. People buy large prints off me I have a Kodak DCS520 that was good up to 18" x 12"

I now have a 10D and eagerly awaiting a Canon 70-200mm 2.8L to hopefully equal my desire to produce quality prints.

My first match with the 10D is next Saturday(19th) if anyone wants to have a peek/giggle I'll sent some through for some quality analising!!!

[Derek Smith]

Cardigan1979 asked how large an image could be created from the 10D, this is a completely different question to "How does digital compare with 'analogue'"

Last week I was working on display panels for an exhibition. The backdrop was five panels each 2m high and 1m wide. The whole image 2m x 5m came from a single shot from the 10D. The image was captured as Large/Fine JPG. Yes, the lighting was excellent and yes the tripod was designed around one owned by Fred Flintstone, but the origional image was only 3072 pixels wide. So when it was enlarged for output on a Novajet 600e Poster Printer running at 600dpi, it should have printed out with pixels 5000/3072 mm wide ie 1.7mm wide or 15 pixels per inch.

Now you can really see 15 pixels per inch, and the higher resolution the printer is, the greater the definition is between the edges of the pixels. At 600dpi on the Novajet you can print legible 2 point text, so 15 pixels per inch would have only been OK if the display could only have been viewed from 20 feet or more. But the exhibition required visitors to walk right up to the display and read detailed information in overlaid panels.

The final display did not have the slightest hint of pixelation - how?

The image was sectioned into five strips each 600 pixels wide. Then in PS, using bicubic interpolation it was resized to 40" wide at 72dpi, ( approx 5x magnification), then Lab USM and finally converted to CMYK for output to the RIP.

One section of the display was an instrument face which needed to be be as sharp as the printer could achieve. So this was reshot in the same perspective but zoomed to fill the frame. The whole image was then overlayed into its panel using PS.

So why print a 72 dpi file using a 600 dpi printer (or higher) - The answer has two parts.

Why 72 dpi image - because the eye has a hard job to see any difference between 72dpi and higher resolutions unless the image has very fine, high contrast linear elements (hairs, wires, lines etc)

Why 600dpi (or higher) print - because the printer is building up colours from cyan, magenta, yellow and black inks. To create light greys, reds or blues the printer needs to put down just a few dots of black or magenta. These are very strong colours and a dot is a dot (it does not blend in with any other inks applied to the same pixel).

At 300dpi the individual dark dots are easily visible.
At 600 dpi the dots are discernable at about 2feet.
At 1440dpi you need a glass to see the dots but a 72dpi image can start to look 'grainy' if there is significant contrast between the pixels.

Obviously, 'soft' images can be enlarged much more than sharp demanding 'technical' images, but with good lighting and skilful use of that vital tool the USM you can create close view images many meters wide from your 10D

It is now time to stop thinking in terms of grain and start thinking in terms of image pixels and printer 'dots'. The 10D is now an input device for Photoshop and your creative compositions will only get a 'Wow' when you master that vital combination 10D / PS / Printer AS WELL AS the all important aspects of capturing the shot in the first place.

Derek