How large can I blow up a ISO 800

[Woodman7]

I am thinking about blowing up one of my pictures that was shot in ISO 800. What is the largest size that will look nice for a Fine Art Print. General Rule would be fine. The picture was taken in the Highest JPEG format on the 10D.

[robertwgross]

The size that you can effectively print is related to the pixel resolution and not much related to the ISO setting.

Besides, if you shoot at too high of an ISO setting and get color noise, you can always post-process that out using a program like Neat Image.

So, you should not have any trouble at all getting to a print of 11x14". Now, if you want to print larger, then you may want to do some interpolation and some refinement on the image. Then you should be able to get to 20x30" and larger. The largest print that I have seen done with the 6.3 Megapixel image was 30x40", and it had been refined a lot, but the print was perfect.

---Bob Gross---

[mwinog2777]

robertwgross wrote:
The size that you can effectively print is related to the pixel resolution and not much related to the ISO setting.

Besides, if you shoot at too high of an ISO setting and get color noise, you can always post-process that out using a program like Neat Image.


---Bob Gross---

The effective size you will be satisfied with relates both to pixel resolution and to ISO.. If the latter were not a very major issue (or "not much related"), we'd all be shooting at 3200, wouldn't we?

Post-processing is great; without it I would have no life. But, there are limits, and one must be careful to not post-process too much.

Having said the above, I've found the maximum I can do is 11x14 at 800, before the quality starts fading.

[robertwgross]

mwinog2777 wrote:
robertwgross wrote:
The size that you can effectively print is related to the pixel resolution and not much related to the ISO setting.
---Bob Gross---

The effective size you will be satisfied with relates both to pixel resolution and to ISO.. If the latter were not a very major issue (or "not much related"), we'd all be shooting at 3200, wouldn't we?


No, we would not be, or should not be shooting at ISO 3200. If we did that, we would have very short shutter speeds and tiny apertures. Sometimes that lack of DOF control is desired, but often it is not desired.

The color noise, as an artifact of high ISO, can be refined out by some noise reduction programs, but if you have a low resolution image to begin with, interpolation can't carry you very far, and you'll hit a quick ceiling on maximum satisfactory print size.

---Bob Gross---

[Woodman7]

Thanks guys.

I will send out for a print soon. I will let you know how it comes out.