Mamiya 7II and large format prints

[romain_j.]

<p>Hi,<br /> Anyone has already made large-format digital prints (1.80 x2.40m approx.) from negatives produced by the Mamiya 7II (with 80 or 65mm). If yes, were you satisfied with the quality, assuming that the shot is good (exposure, sharpness, adjustment) and the photo lab is performing. Any experiences?<br>

Thank you and good day,<br>

Romain</p>

[stuart_richardson]

<p>Hi Romain, as I said in the other thread, I am very much in favor of this combination. I think if your aim is to print this large, you have to be very good in your technique, and use the highest quality materials from start to finish. The camera and lens are capable of it, but they need help. My suggestions would be, in order of importance:</p>

<p>1. High Quality tripod and ballhead -- most of the other things in this list have a small influence, a good tripod is the best thing you can do for quality, even if you are shooting at 1/500th with a light camera like the M7II. If you don't use a tripod, shoot MANY exposures of the same thing so you can find the one with the least image degradation. </p>

<p>2. Find a very good scanner and scanner operator. An Imacon/Hasselblad at 3200 dpi will work for this, but a drum scanner at over 4000dpi could be better in this case depending on what film you use. When printing this large, do not try to save money on the scanning costs -- they are critical for this large a print.</p>

<p>3. Find a excellent printing technician and machines -- don't buy the cheapest paper etc. There is no point making prints this big if you are going to try to cut costs. Just make it smaller if that is the case. Same goes for digital work -- you need someone who knows what they are doing in terms of color correction, profiling, sharpening and so on. You also need to look at every detail at 100% and remove the dust and artifacts. This can take hours -- be ready. If you do not clean all the dust you can see at 100% detail, it will show up easily visible on the print. Believe me, this is my most hated job as a printer, but also one of the most important.</p>

<p>4. Use the finest grained, sharpest films -- Fuji Acros, Tmax 100, PanF, or Delta 100 for black and white, E100G, Provia 100F, Astia 100F, Velvia 100 or Velvia 50 for color slide, or Ektar 100 for color negative. Have them processed properly for large printing -- Xtol, Tmax Developer, Microdol-X, DD-X etc for black and white, done by a very high quality lab for E-6 or C-41.</p>

<p>5. Do not hyperfocal focus -- focus on the most important point in the image and make a considered decision if you need to change focus to increase the apparent depth of field -- focus is always in a single plane, and this will be much more obvious at this size. Use your optimum apertures, failing on the small side -- try f/11 as standard, try to avoid f/4 and f/22. </p>

<p>6. Break any rule you really need to break in order to make it work. </p>

<p>And just to answer the original question as clearly as I can, I have not printed quite that big, but I have done 1mX2m from crops on the Mamiya 7, scanned on the Hasselblad X5, and they look amazing. You are going to be helped by the extreme corner to corner sharpness of the lenses, and their fairly short focal lengths as well as their high micro-contrast. Assuming you use very good technique and you use the best materials and technicians, you will have amazing results. BUT, don't expect a high success rate. Take lots of extra images, because things you do not notice at the time (things in the composition, tiny movements of the subject and so on) can be all to obvious at these sizes. </p>

[romain_j.]

<p>Thank you for your clear answer, Stuart.<br>

The only thing I can not understand is that you recommend a tripod even if you shoot at 1/500th of speed. If I installed stably, a handle shooting at 500th is sharp and great (without considering the depth of field)?<br>

What do you think about this?</p>

[stp]

<p>I read of a test (the source has long since been forgotten) that compared sharpness of photos taken handheld against those taken when the camera was on a tripod. Even at high shutter speeds where conventional wisdom would suggest the handheld would be perfectly sharp, there was a difference, with the tripod photo being noticeably sharper. This difference is going to be most notable at the print sizes you want to make.</p>

[romain_j.]

<p>It is interesting to know this setting, I did not know that the tripod make the difference, even if it seems surprising at 1/500th second. But in fact it seems fairly obvious, especially for very large enlargements.</p>

[david_henderson]

<p>Apart from reinforcing the tripod thing- (there's a difference between sharp enough for most purposes and as sharp as you can get it), I'm going to skip the image capture biton the grounds that its been covered. </p>

<p>I've had prints made up to 1m sq from MF slides (including some made on a mamiya 7ii) and Tango drum scans. These are sharp enough that they don't rely on viewing distance to look sharp. Given that, and making a tiny assumption that people won't be preesing their noses against prints that size , there's little doubt in my mid that this can work, it just depends how you do it.</p>

<p>IMO- and doubtless there are others- the ideal file size for a print that would be somewhere in the range 150ppi-200 ppi. An Imacon scan at Max 3200 ppi will produce a file of rather less than 100ppi. So a big question is how to get the file size up? Are you going to do it, using Bicubic Smoother maybe? Are you going to use software like Genuine Fractals to do it, or are you going to rely on the printer to do it- some of them are pretty good at this. Or are you going to get a more expensive drum scan that might give you the 5100ppi of useful data you need to reach the resolution tou need without interpolation? I think that may be worth a thought before you ask your lab, who might not have as much experience of the different methods as you think, and there will be useful material on Photo.net.</p>

<p>I think whatever route you choose would benefit from a test print using a proportion of your print area to ascertain that the original, file making and resizing, and lab acting together will give you the result you want. </p>

<p>Two final points- I presume you've found a machine /lab that can make a single print your size? And second do you have a computer that will allow you to edit a file of up to a gigabyte at 16 bit or at least 400MB if you scan on a Hasselblad/Imacon. That might simplify the number of options you can consider.</p>

[stuart_richardson]

<p>It is of course possible to take sharp handheld shots, but you must imagine that there is no such thing as holding a camera still. Even when you are holding it steady, your body is swaying slightly, and your hands are slightly shaking. The shorter the shutter speed, the less distance the camera will travel, but when you think about the degree to which you are enlarging, the camera can still travel a visibly noticeable distance in that amount of time. It will not look blurry at small sizes (or even large sizes), but what will happen is that the very finest detail that could have been better defined is slightly less defined. By using a solid tripod you will cut down that motion by another huge degree, and giving the camera the best chance to make a truly sharp image. Even the cable release makes a difference too, because just the act of pressing the shutter button can degrade the sharpness a small amount. If you are in doubt of this, find someone with an SLR that has live view and put a telephoto lens on the camera. Zoom in on the live view. Even the slightest touch of the camera or lens will move the image -- sometimes even footsteps or passing cars will move the image. <br>

Of course, you can't always use a tripod, but if you really want to get the best quality large prints, it is the smartest decision you can make. </p>

[romain_j.]

<p>thank you for the clarification David. I really have no idea about the techniques of scanning and processing of digital files. For now I try already have much information to make a high performance shot . But as you say, it is possible that even the best labs in Paris are not aware of good printing process. Case to follow. By cons from the different answers, a mamiya (+tripod!) and a good shooting process can make high-quality prints, even of 1,80 x2, 40m! It's a good thing. It's a good thing.<br>

(I repeat, I'm sorry if the syntax is wrong I use a translator)</p>

[desmond_kidman]

<p>This completely depends on your definition of sharpness and the viewing distance.<br>

It also depends: is this color or black and white?<br>

For a venue where people will be able to walk right up to the print, I limit 6 x 7 to about 1 meter. I know many people will howl "I can get a TACK SHARP print at 2 meters size......" but their definition of sharp and mine are different.<br>

For a venue where nobody can get closer than 2 meters you may be satisfied.<br>

No matter how many bazillion pixels you scan to and up-res to, the basic information on the film is the issue. I had 2 different 600mb drum scans done by 2 different labs and got the same results, which my above response is based on. I am sure the scans were adequate. When I saw the enlargements I looked at the film at 40x with a microscope. I was not thrilled with what I saw there either. For this size I pull out the large format camera as I want folks to be able to look closely and be happy. You may not have that requirement. </p>

[david_henderson]

<p>At the risk of making your life more complicated, and because you have said that you're new to the issues downstream from taling the photograph, let me add the following.</p>

<ul>

<li>No matter how you decide to have the work scanned, the output from a scan is not usually a print-ready file. It is almost certain that either you or a lab will need to edit and improve the file. If you have a lab do this you must give them a reference and you should certainly get a test print. Naturally they will charge. </li>

<li>Whilst I'm not saying its impossible to get a print made of the size you indicate, the vast majority of labs won't be able to do it and its possible that no lab in Paris can do it- though you might be lucky. You'll need a printer that will make a print 1.8m wide and a paper available in rolls 1.8m wide. There was a LightJet that could print up to just under 2m wide but it's discontinued and in any case it wouldn't have printed the 2.4m long. If I were you i'd find out now how big a print I could actually get made. Always remember that you want a photo quality print, there are machines around that print quite large but offer "near photo quality" and IMO that will not do. You could get it done on two prints each 1.2 x 1.8 and dry mount the two together exactly - which is what Gursky does pretty successfully. Or you may decide to stick with the largest size you can have made locally, which might be 1.2m.</li>

</ul>

[romain_j.]

<p>What is the meaning of "TACK SHARP" (very sharp?)?<br /><br />@ Desmond : the problem is that for the images I want to do, I really can not use a large format. A 120 camera is really the limit for my practice. I recently saw the <a href="http://www.galerie-obadia.com/show.php?show_id=1806&language=1">exhibition of Luc Delahaye</a> who makes prints approx. 1.8 x2.4m or more, he photographed with ALPA and 120 roll film in situations of extreme movement of subjects and prints are very successful and proper, even when you are a few centimeters in front of the print (less powerful than Gursky prints at the same distance observation, of course).<br /><br />@ David : To return to the issues of the process prints, the labs of Paris where I inquired, actually tell me that the maximum height is 1.80m and wide without limit. For more larger prints, you must assemble two prints as you say. He told me they were accustomed to this kind of work.<br /> <br /> Many thanks for your help, really welcome.</p>

[kris_francis]

<p>One more rule: Use a tripod.</p>

<p>Kris</p>

[stuart_richardson]

<p>Romain -- I was curious today, so I went to my lab and took a scan from a very sharp Mamiya 7II slide-- an E100G scan shot with the 43mm lens on a tripod. I sized the image to 1.8mx2.4m and sharpened it using my best sharpening techniques. I then printed a section of it on a smaller sheet of paper. When you look at it closely, it is not very sharp, but there is fine detail visible. If you step back to about 1 meter, it looks very sharp. With a print that is as tall as tall man, most people are going to be further back than 1 meter to look at it. So I would say this performance is quite good. But I would not get too hung up on this either. If you do a good job and take a good photo, the print is going to be extremely impressive -- just the huge size and the good sharpness from a normal viewing distance will make a big impression. This is roughly a 32 times enlargement, which is huge, so it is not going to be as sharp as looking at an A3 print, but it certainly will look good at this size. If extreme resolution at that print size is what you need (i.e. to put your nose in it and it to be very sharp), then you will need 8x10 format or larger. </p>

[andre_noble5]

<p>Use a 4x5!</p>

[romain_j.]

<p>What's better than doing a test to find out, thank you for the info Stuart. It was really likely that the print fails to detail when you have your nose in front, but that does not bother me, actually. But now we know for sure. <br>

I saw some prints by <a href="http://www.goodman-gallery.com/artists/jodibieber">Jodi</a><a href="http://www.goodman-gallery.com/artists/jodibieber"> Bieber</a> in PARIS PHOTO last year, size of 1.6x2.4m color prints they were very nice exept when you are very very close, I think she work with a m7II.</p>

[jens_g.r._benthien]

<p>sharp details require the use of a tripod.<br>

large prints require the use of a tripod.<br>

large prints with sharp details require the use of a very sturdy tripod like the Berlebach or Riess.<br>

Anything else is a waste of time and material.</p>

[peter_a._york]

<p>The lenses on the Mamiya 7 are so good that the images match 4x5 quality, assuming no movements are necessary for focusing. For B&W you will need to get 5000-6000 DPI scans, perhaps more, to extract all the detail. For color, probably less. <br>

The large format photography forum has many posts on the Mamiya 7 and its capabilities. Run a search over there. </p>

[nee_sung]

<p>I don't think people have mentioned a lens hood. It is the NUMBER 1 factor for a sharp image, even before tripods. Yes, it only increases contrast and not sharpness per se, but for apparent sharpness it is of utmost importance.<br>

The lens hood should be equal to the focal length of your lens. So most hoods are too short. Have one custom-made, if you want maximum sharpness.</p>

[romain_j.]

 

On another topic, a user has shared this link, a test of four different MF camera.

<br />

<a href="On another topic, a user has shared the very interesting link (http:/www.hevanet.com/cperez/test/fourcameras.html).">http://www.hevanet.com/cperez//test/fourcameras.html</a>

 

<p>The test is really interesting, it also concludes that the M7II is the best. He establishes the following table, how to interpret the data in bold ?:<br /><br />Mamiya 7<br />80mm L<br /><strong>120 120 60</strong> f / 4<br /><strong>120 120 68</strong> f5.6<br /><strong>120 107 68</strong> f / 8<br /><strong>107 107 76</strong> f/11<br /><strong>76 76 68</strong> f/16<br /><strong>60 60 60</strong> f/22<br /><br />If I understand the rule, when the diaphragm is smaller (depth of field is small too, of course) the performance of the lense is more sharpness?! This rule works for all focusing distances?<br />Thanks for the help.</p>

[david_henderson]

<p>Just to be sure</p>

<p>With most lenses the sharpness increases as you reduce the size of the aperture from its widest ( ie as you go from say f4 to say f8. ) Then the effects of diffraction mean that any further reduction in aperture size results in less overall sharpness. So there is a point- often about two stops from wide open- where the lens seems to perform at its best. </p>

<p>Of course that point may not give you the depth of field that you want, especially with a medium format lens. So reducing the aperture (increasing the f stop number) can give reduced sharpness overall but a wider depth of field . Is that better or worse? I guess that depends on your composition.</p>

<p>I'm not sure what the current view is of Mr Perez' testing. Certainly the numbers he was passing out on Bronica lenses some years ago were pretty improbable and also counter intuitive. </p>

[romain_j.]

<p>Thank you for the reply. For there is no disagreement.<br />Over the aperture is opened (ex. F11 F8 F5, 6), better the performance on the focus distance is sharp. By cons, when the diaphragm is more closed (ex. F11 F16 F22) the the depth of field is "long", but loses sharpness in the focus zone.<br>

Is that correct?</p>

[nee_sung]

<blockquote>

<p>a user has shared this link, a test of four different MF camera. <br /><a rel="nofollow" href="On%20another%20topic,%20a%20user%20has%20shared%20the%20very%20interesting%20link%20%28http:/www.hevanet.com/cperez/test/fourcameras.html%29.">http://www.hevanet.com/cperez//test/fourcameras.html</a></p>

</blockquote>

<p>Yes, that was the link that prompted me to sell all my MF cameras except the Mamiya 7 II and a Rolleiflex TLR. But that was many years ago. I wonder if anything has changed.</p>