Shooting for large prints

[dashtech]

Hi,

Sorry if this has been covered but I have been searching and reading. I am wanting to take photos for use on large prints. Say for a vertical landscape something around the 700mmx900mm size on canvas. Possibly even large similar size prints on paper for framing.

Camera I have is 600D and works fine for everything I want at the moment. Issue is I am not sure how to work with the images to create high detail prints.

I always shoot RAW and for printing save as a .tif but what I am having trouble understanding is how big I can get a picture printed or what the work flow is for making the print ready for print.

Would hate to send a photo away for a large print and it comes back crappy.

If doing a landscape with the intention of large print, is this where I should be doing multiple exposures and stacking them to build the quality and data in the image?

This is really an area I am struggling on, I am getting pictures that look great on my online displays but really want to start printing stuff.

Hopefully this was posted in the right section.

Thanks,

[Rattus79]

It comes back to DPI (Dots Per Inch)

High quality prints are set at 300 dpi, and as you make your canvas larger, the DPI rating goes down. Prints down to 180 DPI can still be considered ok, particularly if you're printing on Canvas. The texture of the meduim helps to hide the lack of details.

The standard resolution of a monitor is generally 72 DPI

If doing a landscape with the intention of large print, is this where I should be doing multiple exposures and stacking them to build the quality and data in the image?

What you describe here is HDR (High Dynamic Range) and will not improve the pixel density of your images.

Taking multiple exposures and "stitching" them together in a panorama will increase the available Pixels and allow for higher a Higher DPI print.

Hope that clears the mud a little?

[ameerat42]

Greg. I think Dash... means taking identical exposures of the same scene and stacking them to achieve (some sort of) smoothing result, like you stack
astronomical shots to eliminate noise.

Now Dash... At some stage, consider printing on normal size paper just a small segment of your much larger image. Try a few different parts of the image, and see
how they come out. If you come across a successful result, that would be what you print at the larger size.

And now to your camera. It is an 18MP camera with a largish sensor, so it has the potential to do what you want. Download a picture and treat it normally in your
raw developer. Save it to a "normal" jpeg and look to see what the dimensions of the final image are in centimetres/inches.

And now to some PP. Have you got the means to resize and re-sample your images? Photoshop is the program I use.
Let's say your standard image size from the camera is (about) 60 x 40 cm. The 1st thing you can try is a straight doubling of your image size WITHOUT
re-sampling the image. Like Greg said, if you have a standard image size (say from Photoshop) of 180 pixels per inch, just double the image so that your
pixel pitch reads 90 pixels per inch. In Photoshop, you DO NOT tick the Re-sample box to achieve this.

A 2nd thing to try is to actually double the pixel pitch to 360 ppi. NOTE: you will get a very large file as a result. THink of doing some mild sharpening on the result and then...

Well, try printing some segments of the two images on smaller paper.

Am.
(PS: No, it's not that easy)

[dashtech]

Thanks for the replies,

Yes like Ameerat said, multiple of the same scene.

Should have mentioned, yeas I have Creative Suite CS5 and have been using PS for a few years. All my work has only ever been for web work and online content. So first time needing to print. Well wanting to print.

Will have a play with a few things tonight and see how it turns out.

Say I am getting a shot printed and want it on... 23"x15" (just an example) In PS I need to be setting the image to that size with the DPI of 300 (or whatever DPI is being used)

Don't mean to sound a complete noob.

Oh and the RAW processor used is Adobe Camera Raw.

[nwhc]

I took the plunge and had a few 20 x 30 inch pictures printed for the office, i think they were $17.50 each so i was not to fussed if they worked or not.

I set up a 20 x 30 inch 300dpi photoshop file, dragged my pic in and free transformed to fit the 20 x 30 area, saved and uploaded to the printer.

They turned out great so much so the boss ordered some for her office. My pics were taken with a 40D so id say your newer 600D with be just as good.

[Rattus79]

Greg. I think Dash... means taking identical exposures of the same scene and stacking them to achieve (some sort of) smoothing result, like you stack
astronomical shots to eliminate noise.

Forgive me if I'm wrong here, but:

If you take identical exposures of the same scene and stack them, it's not going to increase the pixel density as all the pixels are the same size and should (in theory) overlap exactly as well. You're 18 meg shot will still be an 18 meg shot. It will just have more bits per pixel ie a larger file size with no real advantage since you can only have so many colours available within a colourspace.
I suppose noise reduction will be evident for random noise, but any hot pixels will still be hot pixels.

Where-as stitching a panorama will increase the physical number of pixels available. Your 18 meg shot can be taken to the level of gigapixels if you take enough shots. With the increased number of pixels, you can make the canvas size smaller and increase the DPI of your final print.

[dashtech]

Thanks nwhc, will be having a shot at some examples. I still have and love the 40D still comes out every now and then.

- - - Updated - - -

Where-as stitching a panorama will increase the physical number of pixels available. Your 18 meg shot can be taken to the level of gigapixels if you take enough shots. With the increased number of pixels, you can make the canvas size smaller and increase the DPI of your final print.

So say where I would have framed up a single shot at say 15mm - you would say go in at a tighter focal length and shoot more shots to create a panorama as such of the original shot. Example if that was a 15mm focal length landscape orientation, you could in fact do say 5 shots at 50mm portrait orientation and stitch them? (those focal lengths are just examples)

[Rattus79]

So say where I would have framed up a single shot at say 15mm - you would say go in at a tighter focal length and shoot more shots to create a panorama as such of the original shot. Example if that was a 15mm focal length landscape orientation, you could in fact do say 5 shots at 50mm portrait orientation and stitch them? (those focal lengths are just examples)

That's exactly what I'm saying. Not that I recommend it on a day to day basis, but in theory that's how it works.
Shooting like this can produce shots impossible on your 15 mm lens too. I'm yet to come across a 15 mm 1.4 lens yet. but you can get 15mm worth of coverage at F:1.4 by using your 50 mm lens and stiching the results. Only really works well on a static scene though.

[ameerat42]

Forgive me if I'm wrong here, but:

If you take identical exposures of the same scene and stack them...

I tend to agree, but I was just trying to get a handle on what the OP meant.
Am.

[dashtech]

That's exactly what I'm saying. Not that I recommend it on a day to day basis, but in theory that's how it works.
Shooting like this can produce shots impossible on your 15 mm lens too. I'm yet to come across a 15 mm 1.4 lens yet. but you can get 15mm worth of coverage at F:1.4 by using your 50 mm lens and stiching the results. Only really works well on a static scene though.

Thanks.

Those focal lengths were purely examples. My main lens for landscape work is my 10-24mm. Was using 50mm as an example of zooming in.

This wouldn't be for everyday shooting. Just some scenes I would love to have a large shot of.

[Mark L]

Not sure about canvas, but sometimes I reckon people stress a little to much about the perfect result. Reckon what you have will turn out well, unless you want to produce a billboard. Then you may have to do things differently.
Possibly the more important question is, who should you get to do your canvass prints?

[Rattus79]

Ausphotography has a very considerately priced Canvas printer as a site sponsor.

http://www.thecanvasprinters.com.au/

I personally have printed a 30 x 40 inch print from a 2 megabyte jpg file. It looks great!