Printing big!

[David Rayden]

Hi,

I wanted to see how big my E-400 prints would go and after a discussion with my boss she allowed me to use our commercial printers.

I supplied the files and left them to it. I was surprised by the results!

Sorry for the i-Phone snaps, but you get the idea of the size.
The first two are both single shots: not panoramas. Petronas towers on the left (the print is 92cmx70cm.), and a boat at sunrise on the right - the OTT print!

The next is a multi-shot panorama from Indoneisa, so the size is less of a surprise!

But this shot is a crop of a single-shot and the clarity and detail is amazing. Looks great from 1m away!

This is another panorama - Bali sunrise.

Detail of Bali Sunrise - first the original jpeg, then a photo of the print from the same area to compare.


Again, the first is the original .jpeg, then a photo of the print in the same area.


Lastly, the original cropped single-shot of the pier, boat and Bali panorama.




I see people asking questions about print size. It seems that with a 10mpx camera and a decent printer, it's really a non-issue.
I have no idea what upscaling software they used, but the single-shot sizes are impressive - I have nowhere to put the OTT ones!

I hope this helps someone when considering the matter of large prints.

David.

[Jane Doe]

Re: Printing big!

Thanks for that. My son used to use my old E410 and he took some fantastic shots with it and he's printed out a couple for his wall - nothing as huge as that though - and I agree the print quality of his big images is fabulous. The only issue we had was that Jessops dont (or didnt) print to the size/format that Olympus produce and we had to choose to have it cropped or to have it printed on the next size up with wasted paper, we didnt want it cropped so we had to pay more and waste paper

[David Rayden]

Re: Printing big!

Thanks for that. (

You're welcome. I think more people would print their favourite shots large if they knew it would turn out well.

We often pixel-peep too much, and you can see the Bali Panorama has noise (I shot it at 320ISO and played with contrast a bit) but the noise disappears in print!

[mike_j]

Re: Printing big!

The point of these big prints is that generally they are not inspected closely and it's amazing how effective they are when viewed from a suitable distance.

I have had large posters (8-10 ft) made to advertise exhibitions from simple water colour sketches scanned on my desktop scanner as well as from good quality negatives and they were all fine viewed from normal distance for a poster of that size.

[David Rayden]

Re: Printing big!

Yes, the subject to object viewing distance can be critical.

I never thought my 92cmx70cm would look so good even close up. Those pictures above of the Petronas Towers are the original 1:1 100% zoom from the jpeg, and the same area close-up from the print.

The pier and boat also look great from relatively close.

I think maybe I read too much into people talking about "Good enough for A3" when talking about enlargements on other forums.

[Ian]

Re: Printing big!

People forget that if you print large you don't naturally view the print close up. As long as the image is of good quality you can make very satisfactory large prints as long as the viewing distance is not too close. I have made very nice A3 prints from 3 megapixel images. On the other hand I have made A4 prints from 12 megapixel that went straight in the bin!

Ian

[carter2]

Re: Printing big!

Whooooohh That's very big