Enlarge an image to poster size with digital camera??

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I am looking into buying a digital camera with 35mm qualities. I want to know which digital camera supports enlarging photos to poster size and larger. For example I go to italy and take a photo of a gondola when I get home I upload the video to my local kodak dealer and ask them to enlarge the photo to 25 inches horizontal by 34 inches vertical. With a regular 33mm camera I know this is possible but with a digital camera??? This is my question. please email me the results. Thanks

-- Anthonyt D'Agelo (adisegna@a-pass.com), July 12, 2000

Answers

It's probably not possible yet, at least with good results...

Let's say you have a top of the line, in the current market, 3.3 megapixel camera which gives you 2048x1536 pixel images. Printing one at 25x34 would mean using only about 60 pixels per inch (2048/34") which would be likely to look VERY grainy.

You might be able to do a bit better by using Genuine Fractals to convert the image to a fractally encoded file which you might be able to scale up. I still think the final image would be a bit grainy looking. You could easily download a few sample images from digital camera review sites and run them through Genuine Fractals and then send one out for printing, but I'm guessing you'd need at least twice the resolution in both dimensions in order to get the bare minimum acceptable PPI and would probably be a lot happier nearer 200 or 300 PPI. Granted that just what minimum PPI will be acceptable is dependant on subject matter, printing process, etc.

Perhaps you should contact the site that would do the printing and see what THEIR minimum requirements would be from a digital image.

Good luck, and if you get any numbers from such a service, why not post back to this forum and let us all know what they say?

-- Gerald M. Payne (gmp@surferz.net), July 12, 2000.


The only possible way to really pull that off would be to send the file to a company with a Lightjet 5000. The hardware interpolation engine is unbelievable and you MIGHT be able to pull off a poster with a 2048x1536 image. The detail won't be very intense but it should be a nice image viewed at a reasonable distance. You should really stick to film for anything you want cranked up that large, heck Medium format might be the minimum you'd need to put out a photo quality image that large. Scanned on a drum scanner or Imacon you could easily pull off that size print...

-- Cris Daniels (danfla@gte.net), July 12, 2000.

Actually, not only is it possible, I've done it with GREAT results! There are 2 online services that will make these prints for you. The one I used was www.bignose.com. I took a cropped JPG file from my 2.1 megapixel Olympus C2020, enlarged it to be 150dpi using Qimage Pro's Bicubic Spline interpolation, and had a 24x36" poster printed. It was fantastic. Now, www.ezprints.com will do 12" by any number of feet panoramas on Kodak photographic paper. The costs for either was around $20-30. Not Ansel Adams medium format quality, but better than anything I'd blown up from 35mm.

-- Brad Grant (bradandsteph@home.com), July 12, 2000.

Well, I stand[er, recline... :-)] corrected, as well. Tell me, does the poster really look as good or anywhere near as good as say a 5x7" printed on an Epson from the same file? If it does, I'd sure like to know how??? Or are you viewing the result from a greater distance? None of the interpolation routines or even the fractal routines actually add any real info and bi-cubic alone isn't that wonderful. Is it perhaps that they use a dye-sublimation process and get away with less resolution because of it?

-- Gerald M. Payne (gmp@surferz.net), July 13, 2000.

No, if looking at the poster from 6 inches like holding a small print in your hands, you will see dots, (more like film grain.) They use some type of inkjet with UV-lamination, I think, and do have in-house processing that gets great detail from small files. 2x3 foot posters are not meant to look at up close, (regardless of the source or means.) Simple physics states that the larger the field of view, the greater the viewing distance for focus. From a few feet, it looks completely smooth and continuous and the colors matched perfectly.

-- Brad Grant (bradandsteph@home.com), July 13, 2000.


What kind of print did you get from Bignose? Inkjet or a real, photographic paper, print?

I would like to make several posters from my digital files, but have not experimented very much with it. A lab in my state uses a LED printer to make REAL prints from my images. but again, no time to play.

David

-- David (photoguy@the-photo-guy.com), July 13, 2000.


I guess it really depends on what your happy with and what your subject matter is, I would never be happy with even a 11x17 off my Nikon 950. The difference between film and 2.1 or even 3.3 megapixel cameras and slide film is staggering. If you want to view the images from a distance then fine, you might pull one off if your expectations are not too high. I like pin sharp stuff and its impossible right now to get the pixel count required for pin sharp 13x19, 16x20 or larger sizes from a digicam, even the expensive ones fall far short of medium format film.

-- Cris Daniels (danfla@gte.net), July 13, 2000.

I have to disagree with blowing up a digital image to poster size. It doesn't have enough resolution, so the larger you make the print, the more noise you introduce into the equation. Same goes for interpolation - the more you do to the file, the noiser the end results will be. Moral of the story: you can't add information that's not there to begin with.

Remember, when you look at GF's images, they are high resolution to begin with, so they CAN get the poster size without the print looking like hell. I know these people personally and can vouch for their techniques.

I have experimented with Genuine Fractals and I know for a fact you can blow up images to much larger sizes due to the fractal compression and scaling engine. I must warn, however, if you scale and then reduce the resolution size (saving it as a lossless format) you will be throwing data information out the window. It is NOT lossless both ways.

-- Sue Bald (destiny3@ix.netcom.com), July 14, 2000.


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