Extremely Large Prints 6ft by 6ft

charles_wood · May 25, 2010

It's just illustrates that long lens "panos" are not an exact substitute for images captured with a wide-angle lens.

As has been pointed out, that's not wrong, just different, and sometimes the choice of the photographer. Fuji produced the GX617 pano camera with four lens options as I recall, including a 300mm. Obviously the 300 delivered far more compression than the 90mm. Conversely, 90 and 105 mm options were often far too wide for some subject matter. I use a number of different lens for stitching. My choice depends strictly on the subject matter and what I want to accomplish.

chris_ciotti · May 25, 2010

I agree with a few of the other posters in that you should consult a professional print shop that routinely prints that large. I've heard many good things over the years about Calypso Imaging but it seems they've closed. I use West Coast Imaging a lot (the shop they referred their business to) and find them to be both knowledgeable and high quality. They might be able to answer your questions. Can't hurt to ask.

Good luck.

sjgcit · May 25, 2010

As you are trying to print existing images I'd suggest scaling up the image with something like ImageMagick.

http://www.imagemagick.org/Usage/resize/

It has a lot of filtering and re sampling options to control the process. Scroll to the end of the document to get examples of the effect of these options. Note, however, that your enlargement simply won't ever be great up close. Liquid rescale might be worth trying.

Some images ( although not most ) can sometimes be converted to a vector format and rescaled and converted back to bitmap images ( like photos ). Unlikely to help you, I'd guess, but something to try if you're desperate.

kelly_flanigan1 · May 25, 2010

Here are some tid bits of of info learned from actually printing big stuff for customers. Hopefully some grey matter will be dislodged by these barbs:

***(1) The DARK Print issue; ( the Barney Paint issue :)

One failure mode I see at times with the giant prints we do is like a new couples painting their kids bedroom. The kid wants Barbie Pink or Barnery Purple. It looks great and OK on the *small* sample or paint chip. Then when the entire room is painted it "sucks the light" out and it is a dark cave like room. ***This happens too with a giant print that covers a wall. It can look a LOT darker it if overwelms the room and thus folks are upset.

After 9/11 I printed for a dentist a night shot he had of the twin towers to fill up his wall; a giant 42" by 10 foot thing. We printed a small 24x36" cropped section to show what details would look like. *ALL* the warnings about "sucking the light out" were ignored by the dentist. He ended up adding extra lights in that room; since the giant DARK print "sucked the light" out of the room. This "issues" is common to folks who have never painted a house before; or made giant posters too.

BR>

(2) Typically customers who worry wart about pixels, resolution, and upsizing create *THE ABSOLUTE WORSE* inputs for giant prints. This is based on printing big stuff like this for 17 years. *STRIVE* to use a few percentage of your brain power on an image with impact. Folks who get into a huge tar baby about pixels and resolution about always get wrapped up in a massive concern over stuff that often rarely matters.

BR>

(3) Endless debates. One can debate until the end of time whether the input required is a 16mm HIT camera; or our 24x36" negative off our process camera. At some point you have to be professional and consider what the heck is your actual goal. Amateurs and PROS too get into a MASSIVE tar baby about this; their is NO goal; NO client; this NO viewing distance. Thus the lay peanut gallery debates film size and megapixels endlessly ; when there is no goal defined yet; thus it is an endless dumb wizzing contest.

BR>

(4) None of this anything new; it goes back probably many centuries to paintings on ceilings ie middle ages.

BR>

(5) Making big prints is not anything new in digital printing either. It sort of was a rage when Bush-1 was in office say 1992 ish at print shops.

BR>

(6) **MAKE SAMPLES** ; Instead of farting around and talking; make some cropped samples at the target print size. This was probably new in "how to" seminars with big printing in the early 1990's.

BR>

(7) BLOAD you cannot polish a turd-Thuman. If your original does not have the details; upsizing to the moon just creates the common dumb stupid giant bloaded files we printers get about every time for a big posters. Upsizing to us printers is as new as water is to farming; or wood to a carpenter.

A good part of dealing with the public in digital printing is set up. If I have printed big stuff like this for 17 years and Client A's stuff is always easy and Client B's stuff is always a PITA; typical bloaded mess with his 2 hours lecture on pixels; calibration and upsizing and meddling; at some point I Have to charge Mr ego/meddle ie Client B more; since time is money. What you want to do is talk to the printer and *not tie their hands or make the job a hassle.* Talk to your target printer; find what works on their machines. The last thing we want is each print step micromanaged by the lay public; dictating to do wonky things that create no value but waste boatloads of time.

There is really no end to the totally screwball things folks will do with inputs; their 3 megapixel Jpeg image off their camera comes to us on a DVD; a tiff so big it will not fit on a CD. Folks do dumb stuff ; then take that 3 megapixel image; print in on a crappy 8x10 printer then flatbed it at a zillion dpi and you get bloaded GIANT images with no shadow details.

Thus one has to tactfully try to get the original Jpeg without Mr Egos head exploding; since they are Photoshop certified; took XYZ college courses and are experts. Bload and doing dumb things is an issue but it seems to be taboo on photo.net; since it bothers folks to talk about this giant elephant issue.

BR>

(8) Shipping, Mounting and Laminating Costs on BIG stuff. Theses can be large; thus a LOCAL shop can save you GOBS of money. Do Not assume that shipping a giant mounted print is low in cost. It can require crateing and trucking costs.

BR>

(9) there were 35mm film frames at some Galleries in the 1960's of the Vietnam war that were HUGE

g dan mitchell · May 25, 2010

Kelly, a bit too much caffeine this morning perhaps? ;-)

Dan

dave_b15 · May 25, 2010

@Dan South

So, I walked toward the print to read the notes posted beside it and, whoa! Suddently, the print was all blurry and in splotches! The camera used? 35 mm film. In disbelief, I walked back over to the other side of the room and to the position where I had spotted the photo initially. Sure enough, it was sharp, sharp, sharp!

</blockquote>

I went to the movies recently after a long spell of watching DVDs exclusively and I couldn't believe how blurry the movie was - and this was sitting in the back row. It was a little better without my glasses on - with my glasses, I was starting to get a headache.

I once walked up to an Adams lithography print, you know those posters, and stuck my nose up to it. Aside from the funky little litho dots, it seemed as though I could look back in the distance for ever. I can only imagine what his silver prints must be like.

Photo quality according to the printers is 300dpi. You cannot do 6' by 6' in digital at 300dpi with any camera on the market without stitching.

If you consider the costs of 50MP Hasselblads, getting LF cameras and disposing them after use would be cheaper.

At such large prints, film rules - digital drools.

dan_south · May 25, 2010

I once walked up to an Adams lithography print, you know those posters, and stuck my nose up to it. Aside from the funky little litho dots, it seemed as though I could look back in the distance for ever. I can only imagine what his silver prints must be like.

</blockquote>

Interesting. The Adams lithographs that I've seen weren't particularly detailed. To me, their beauty comes from his brilliant compositions and the amazing contrast between his highlights and shadows. I have yet to see a B&W print from digital capture that compares in terms of contrast. Detail, certainly - digital capture holds lots of detail when properly sharpened. But digital B&W tends to look like so many shades of gray. In an Adams print, black and white are REALLY black and white.

You cannot do 6' by 6' in digital at 300dpi with any camera on the market without stitching.

</blockquote>

As many have stated, it all depends on the viewing distance. Billboards have been made from CROPS of 35mm film images. A 5D2 or a D3x is going to give much more detail than that little piece of film, but if you stand within 10 feet of a billboard it's going to look grainy and soft no matter what camera you use (even 8x10 film or MF digital).

Dan's fine example notwithstanding, most subjects aren't rendered well by stitching unless all of the detail lies on a single plane. You can stitch a flat wall ad infinitum because no depth perception is expected.

kelly_flanigan1 · May 25, 2010

G Dan;

I get several calls every day on how big can I enlarge. After perhaps 10,000 times there is always another call where folks are so darn confused. It is really quite sad; they just went to a seminar and some guru has them all worried about a non issue. The view here for 2 decades plus is to try to get folks to see actual examples.

Dave; the 50 megapixel 4x5 scan back here makes a fairly decent input for Big poster; so does a drum scan of a 4x5 negative.

It really does NOT matter a rats rear if the input is film or digital; either can be rich with info or all fluff and useless. Some of us got over this concern 17 years ago. Again folks who dwell on the input type about always create the worst inputs; the loose sight of using an image with impact.

What really matters is the quality of the image; NOT if it is film or digital. There are folk in both camps that make crap and great images

The input for a giant print does NOT have to be a camera; it can just be another print scanned on our 36" wide 600 dpi RGB scanner.

The 50 megapixel back here makes a 8400 by 6000 pixel image ; thus without even upsizing it makes at 84x60 inch print at 100 ppi. That is 7 by 5 feet. With a mild in house upsize to 150 ppi and a tad of sharpening this makes a fine print that looks sharp at say 20 inches

Most all folks would be better to stop asking and just try something as an example. It basically about as hard as figuring how much ketchup to place on fries; you do not need any gurus or a Mettler balance.

For our old Process camera; a 2x enlargement from its negative is a 4x6 foot print. The typical common roll materials we used were 36, 42 and 54" wide.

In Mapping the giant wall maps I print are all digital. With a 4.5 x6.5 foot print the "ppi" I have to use really depends on the smallest alleys street spacings; the street name length and font used and size. Sometimes 300 ppi is not enough 350 to 400 has to be used.

dan_south · May 25, 2010

Obviously the 300 delivered far more compression than the 90mm. Conversely, 90 and 105 mm options were often far too wide for some subject matter.

</blockquote>

Exactly, but with the Fuji panoramic camera you're not trying replicate the angle of view of the 75 mm lens with multiple shots from the 300 mm. That's effectively what digital stitching does. It's a combination of telephoto compression over a wide angle of view. Sometimes it works; sometimes it doesn't. Combining this phenomenon with the flattened arc effect can yield an Escher-like quality of spatial dimensions gone haywire.

kelly_flanigan1 · May 25, 2010

In many BIG commercial jobs there is a mixture of details.

The final print has a BIG image to draw you to it; it has small print showing where to buy it.

The LAX airport backlit transparency might be of Britney or Miley hawking a new 5G iPhone; the small text shows who sells it in each state. Thus transparency might be a 300 ppi image required for the text; and the models image really was upsized from 30 to 80; up to the 300. This is extremely common in commercial work. The models eyes or face be from a closer shot; or made to have sharper eyelashes thus it appears sharper . Thus if at LAX and you are outbound to MSP and have time to kill; you while at Terminal 5 you check out the new 5G with nanoburst and note that Acme sells them in the Twin Cities.

In GAG stuff for parties "go for it folks" take YOUR high school annual where you look like Pee Wee with a bow tie and Plaid Pants and all. I scan whatever image. Then it is printed like you are 5 to 6 feet tall; images that are postage stamp size. Thus beware if your wife or kids borrow this stuff; you might be on foam core as cut out figure in a day or so.

For the women at one LA car dealership we took the owners postage stamp Pee Wee like Junior High photo and printed it about 3.5 by 5 feet and laminated it. Then at night the repair guys placed it way the hell up on the building so visible from the freeway; thus the KFI guys on the radio were talking about it; when the owner was driving to work the next morning.

charles_wood · May 25, 2010

Exactly, but with the Fuji panoramic camera you're not trying replicate the angle of view of the 75 mm lens with multiple shots from the 300 mm. That's effectively what digital stitching does. It's a combination of telephoto compression over a wide angle of view. Sometimes it works; sometimes it doesn't. Combining this phenomenon with the flattened arc effect can yield an Escher-like quality of spatial dimensions gone haywire.

90 or 105 mm lenses, actually. Unless I'm specifically trying to use compression for effect, I seldom use beyond 70-80MM and most of the time I use 30-40mm range, camera oriented vertically. The resulting image is very similar to the field of view from the 105mm lens on the Fuji, when 5-6 vertical frames are stitched. I'm pleased with my results and neither my customers nor I lose sleep over the final images.

Whether it be music/audio reproduction or photography, the reproduction of music or images is an illusion at best. Colorations and distortions are added electronically or optically. I've long accepted the fact that perfection is impossible and simply try and use those perfections to enhance my efforts rather than detract.

aidjoy · May 25, 2010

Not sure if this has been mentioned yet but as far as a test print is concerned just do some math and give them a crop of the frame to print on an 8x10. Get your math right (just division) and this works perfectly. Example (rough): you want to see what a 2000px x 3000px image would look like at 50" wide. just give them a 600px wide crop of the frame and tell them to print on an 8"x10" landscape format.

Also, I have had images off my d3 printed by <a href="http://www.pictureframes.com">Graphik Dimensions</a> up to 48" wide on canvas and they look perfect. Their website is a little hokie looking but I've toured their facilities and they do first class work! Their guy working the computers has an impressive display of degrees on the wall and really knows his stuff.

If I were you I would send them a crop (explain to them what you're doing) and see what kind of final product they can come up with. Only cost ya a couple of bucks to see. From my experience all the people that say you can't enlarge to such n such size for whatever reason are full of it. I have really high standards and I've seen some awesome large prints come from some small files.

Good luck!

g dan mitchell · May 25, 2010

Whether it be music/audio reproduction or photography, the reproduction of music or images is an illusion at best. Colorations and distortions are added electronically or optically. I've long accepted the fact that perfection is impossible and simply try and use those perfections to enhance my efforts rather than detract.

</blockquote>

Being a photographer with a career in music - it is a long story - this caught my attention. There are two issues:

<ul>

<li>I agree strongly that perfection is impossible. It is something to strive for, but we don't achieve it. I'm not even certain what perfection in a performance, recording, or photographic print might mean.</li>

<li>Given that, what we sometimes think of as "imperfections" may well simply be characteristics. The primary goal of a photograph - at least in most situations - is not to be free of "distortions" or to look "exactly like reality." The first is obsessive and the second is simply impossible. </li>

</ul>

Dan

kelly_flanigan1 · May 25, 2010

Your printer company can size you image to 6x6 feet and crop out a section and print it. Many of us do this to end the ****countless confusion.**** He crops out some detailed section or a strip and that is what the client signs off on. It is really in the BEST interest of a film lab or digital inkjet lab to do this. It is a massive equalizer. One has a tangible real life part of the 6x6 foot image to play with. It can be looked at; loved or cursed. It is like asking does this Beer taste good; here is a real sample. NOT a rats nest of stupid numbers and massive gobble gook. Having something real has a Great weight.

The sad thing is most folks here have as small printer; or have a store who has one. Thus make a cropped A or B sized section of the 6x6 foot poster and place it on wall and look at it at different distances. It really is not rocket science.

swilson · May 25, 2010

As others have pointed out it is best not to get too wrapped up about resolution, and certainly not pixel count. Almost all people are going to want to stand where they can take in the whole photos at once. After a certain point more resolution simply does not add that much to a photo, unless you are trying to impress other photographers with how much detail is in your photo.

Of course even a small error in taking a photo can reduce the effective resolution of your camera by a huge factor. It is not hard to turn a 15MP into effectively a 1 MP camera with just a bit of hand shake.

As far as stitching is concerned, I am a big fan of stitching and I have to point out that Dan S. really does not know much about the subject. A good program like PTGui works out the geometry such that the final image is the same as if you were using a rectilinear lens. But the resolution is not needed and really is wasted on a large print. Take this image for example

<a href="

If it were printed 6 feet high it would be printed at 122 pixels / inch. There is a sign on the fence on the left-hand side that is easily readable in the image. The text on that sign is 7 pixels high, so at 122 pixels / inch we are talking about text that is around 0.57 inches high, or right around 4 points. I can tell you from experience that virtually no one would ever get close enough to a print that large to even come close to being able to read the text on that sign. A good clean 6 Mpixel image printed to the same size would have almost the same visual impact.

My message is this, it is really pretty easy to get images with insane levels of detail, but this detail has little impact on the final print.

kelly_flanigan1 · May 25, 2010

Here shot 10 years ago back east ; 35 megapixels in Infrared ; full frame and cropped sections:

Used Lens cost 5 dollars in the early 1960's

Cell Tower is about 5 Km away.

It was shot through a client's houses dirty window that also had plexiglass windows covers to reduce heat loss.

The lens is considered on the LF board to be a dud.

It is not even a lens that folks follow yacking about lines per mm tests either.

It is your basic 5000 x 7000 pixel image from a scan back from 1996; 14 years ago.

The Canon 50D is 15.1 megapixels; the other scan back here is a 50 megapixel back

charles_wood · May 25, 2010

The text on that sign is 7 pixels high, so at 122 pixels / inch we are talking about text that is around 0.57 inches high, or right around 4 points. I can tell you from experience that virtually no one would ever get close enough to a print that large to even come close to being able to read the text on that sign. A good clean 6 Mpixel image printed to the same size would have almost the same visual impact.

I would generally agree although I have a panorama file of a wall of several hundred license plates flanked by antique gas pumps on each side. The detail is good enough that you can barely read some of the serial numbers on the adhesive renewal tags on many of the plates when it is printed to about a four foot width. Some of my gallery visitors spend a fair amount of time, squinting, doing just that. :-) It's an image that usually winds up in young boy's rooms, a dad's den or game room or a garage wall and proves that anyone can become a pixel peeper.

swilson · May 25, 2010

This was taken with a cheap point and shoot camera, all 357 MP of it. The red square is shown below as a 100% crop

The full image is 14316 x 25000 pixels, a print at 300 ppi would be around 4 ft high by 7 ft wide, and unless you are really into front loaders not all that interesting of a print.

The point is raw resolution in this day and age is very cheap, but resolution by itself is not going to make a large print good and lack of super high resolution is not going to ruin an otherwise good print, at least IMO.

mauro_franic · May 26, 2010

OP,

Print my sample sheet below at 180 dpi and you can evaluate how MF film and the 40D look printed at 60" x 80".

http://www.photo.net/film-and-processing-forum/00WErk

california · May 26, 2010

Steve;

Now, after all the above, what would you like to do? It certainly sounds as if you are developing clients and have a good start on an exciting business. I have a feeling work will continue to come your way and you will develop techniques at least adequate to please both sides of these transactions.

Look, I remember an article in a popular photography magazine back in, I think, the 70's. It reported on a young man having the time of his life going out in the field and photographing landscapes . . . with a 35mm camera. He had found a company who would transfer his transparencies not through the medium of sensitized papers, but through dyes sprayed onto common papers from large print to wall size. Examples were given of institutional placement of his images in hospitals, commercial buildings and on the walls of delighted client's homes. Importantly, the article described not only how happy he was, but how his images enlivened and cheered so many who passed through these buildings. Can you imagine just giving yourself up to a process you love and having plenty of people delighted in your work?

There are inevitably those who would call work like this that of a hack. But the world is not lacking in artists and individuals with extraordinary technical achievement in our field. I'm stunned and overwhelmed by the abundance of spectacular work found on this web site. If you are finding some satisfaction with your endeavor, and especially resolve yourself towards study in excellence over the coming years; if you have people who want your work right now; who especially are giving you referrals, don't miss a beat. Go for joy in your life and pass it on.

markonestudios · May 27, 2010

This may be better addressed in the Digital Darkroom forum, as it will probably have a wider audience than in our venerable Canon one :)

huang_shao_hui · June 9, 2010

Dear Scott:

Can you tell us what 'cheap point and shoot' camera you use to take the 357MP shot? Thanks.

swilson · June 9, 2010

It was a Canon PowerShot SX100 IS, used on a Gigapan panoramic head. I don't remember exactly but there were a few hundred photos stitched together to make that one. The whole think is automated so I just got it set up and let it go.

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Extremely Large Prints 6ft by 6ft

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