Digital Technical Photography Query

[aldus]

Technical photopgraphy, as opposed to fine art or photojournalism...anybody on here doing it with say, a 10D?

Here is the real question: my organization is looking at the possiblity of using a digital single lens reflex camera for their in-house repro photography of objects too big for flat-bed scanners or of a 3-D nature. This means getting high enough resolution to permit full-size reporduction prints (using large format inkjet printers). In some cases, this will be maps, say 40 x 60 inches in size, and we'll need to be able to resolve their detail in the ink-jet copies.

Any one doing this?

[Scottes]

A 40x60 print at a decent quality (say 200 DPI) would be 8,000x12,000, or 96 megapixels, which is 16 times the resolution of the 10D at 6 megapixels. It's 4 times the resolution of something like a $30,000 medium format digital Leaf Valeo.

Since you're trying to reproduce maps with quality good enough for details, I'd even be tempted to go to 240 DPI, and now you're up near 120 megapixels.

Though you can get away with 240 DPI, it's generally considered best to "scan" at twice the final destination allowing detail to remain through multiple screening processes done during the reproduction process.

480 megapixels if taken for near-exact duplication.