photo's for a resturant

[Kyda]

hi there! I'm a frequent lurker, and don't post much, but I do have a question I'm hoping somebody can help with.

I was just asked to take pictures of a new resturant in town, and they would need some REALLY big prints. I was given an estimate of approx 5ft x 3ft. I have a 10 MP Rebel XTI. My questions are:

1. will my camera take a picture that would be big enough in resolution to print that big?
2. where the heck to I get a picture printed that big?

thanks for any help!

[nathanbarlow]

with 10MP, you can print at 25.8" (2.15 ft) by 17.2" (1.43 ft) at a photo print resolution which is usually around 180dpi. Of course if this is for a bill board which is viewed from a distance, you can drop the print resolution a fair bit and this will give some extra size.

If it is for an actual photo that will be seen close up, you are gonna need a serious camera, like 20MP or something. Alternatively, you could use a zoom and make a panoramic style image which has several rows of images.I have made something like a 43MP equivalent image this way, with a 6MP camera. THis is the trickiest way though - time consuming, and gotta get all the shots right.

[theArchitect]

Sounds like you need to rent a medium or large format camera.

For printing, you'll probably have to go to a specalist printer which will be quite expensive if it's only small run.

[OsmosisStudios]

Sorry, but I disagree with you both.

10mp will be fine for 3x5 feet. The 10mp files I get are 3872x2592 (3:2). even at 100dpi, that's a 2x3 foot image. Extrapolate a bit, and with the help of a good printer, you should be able to get something that size.

Finding a good printer for a single shot, too, should be fairly easy, straightforward and, most importantly, cheap. That being said, the restaurant will be footing the bill, so it really doesn't matter.

[FormElement]

Originally Posted by OsmosisStudios

Sorry, but I disagree with you both.

10mp will be fine for 3x5 feet. The 10mp files I get are 3872x2592 (3:2). even at 100dpi, that's a 2x3 foot image. Extrapolate a bit, and with the help of a good printer, you should be able to get something that size.

Finding a good printer for a single shot, too, should be fairly easy, straightforward and, most importantly, cheap. That being said, the restaurant will be footing the bill, so it really doesn't matter.

I agree. Assuming that the end user is hiring you, and you get generally good results with an older consumer level camera, the end expectation is probably not a poster for Glamour magazine. I used Large Format Posters | Color Poster Prints | SAVE on Poster Printing! recently and was pleased with the service and quality. You can get billboard sized vinyl from them if you want for a very fair one-off price. There are many other "very good" large format printing sources out there that I have not yet tried.

Apparent image resolution is a function of viewing distance. My personal opinion is that one can reasonably assume that the normal viewing distance for a typical image is the average of it's height and width (a 3'x5' would be viewed from at least 4 feet away on average) 100dpi is just acceptable for that.

If you get really really (pixel level) sharp images, then you should be able to successfully interpolate them up twice (sixteen times as large). You will probably only get that kind of quality from a prime lens. Even a nifty fifty will do it though at f/8. 160 megapixels of unique image data will just never be there, but if your micro-contrast is good, then the end result should still be quite usable.

If you find that you need to scale images up a lot, here's a great read... Scaling Images