Eggleston's larger-format prints 35mm or medium format?

[steve_johnston9]

<p>I was reading that William Eggleston made a number of larger prints of many of the orginial photographs that made him famous, 40 by 66 inches instead of the original format of 16 by 20 inches. My understanding was that Eggleston was mostly a lecia/canon shooter. How is this possible from 35mm , my understanding is that 16x20 was the limit for 35mm to get a reasonable looking print, or where these prints shot in medium format ?</p>

[Niels - NHSN]

There is no theoretical limit to any format, it is more a matter of viewing distance. If photography

should hang on the same walls as contemporary painting, it will need to be printed at a size that

takes the larger viewing distance into consideration.

[Colin O]

I read somewhere on Photo.net that 35mm negatives are (were) sometimes used to print billboard ads. Nobody views a billboard up-close. At least, that's not the intended viewing distance.

[craig_shearman1]

<p>I've printed 35mm as large as around 20x30 myself and seen 30x40 prints from 35mm that looked fine.<br /><br />For 40 years, the Kodak Colorama display in Grand Central Terminal in New York was an 18-foot-by-60-foot enlargement (a backlit transparency rather than a print), often made from a 35mm original. Movies you see in your local theater are shot and projected (with the exception now of digital) on 35m film with a frame that's about half the size of the 35mm still-camera frame but projected as much as 60 feet wide (over 100 feet sometimes at a drive-in if you can still find one). Bottom line is that there really is no limit. <br /><br />The key, of course, is that super-large prints are not normally viewed close up. The larger the print, the farther away the viewer usually is. So yes, a 60-foot picture from a 35mm original is going to look grainy and fuzzy up close, but is going to look fine from 100 feet away. In movies, you have the additional factor that each individual frame is only on the screen for a fraction of a second, not giving you time to examine it closely even if you were up close.</p>

[Lou_Meluso]

<p>Eggleston often shot with a Mamiya Universal Press camera with 6x9cm format. There are pictures I've seen of him holding it.</p>

[Niels - NHSN]

As the title suggests, he used a 6x6cm camera for the book "2 1/4". Don't know which, but the

recent very large prints of his classic images are mostly, if not all, from 35mm originals AFAIK.

[JDMvW]

<p>Here's a Kodak report on the Colorama displays, as said, done on occasion from 35mm Kodachrome slides.</p><div></div>