Upsize digital photo's for printing and framing?

[Lee Taylor]

I use to use film and had the photos enlarged and framed. How does digital compare in regards to enlarging and framing. Is the quality significantly lower in enlarged photographic paper-printed digital photos?

In other words, I am thinking about "spending" on digital when I have a perfectly good 35mm film camera with a strobe. A little outdate but very usuable.

Talk me into digital or talk me into staying with the film camera please. Just curious about others opinions.

 

[HatchetJoe]

To state the obvious without insult: I would simply suggest to shoot everything in very high resolution.

 

[NadMat]

digital is fine if you get better than 7 MP but i think film is something like 58MP?. However, is nice to stick an 8G or better card in camera and get hundreds of pics without having to load film, open the case once or twice a dive day. I like digital, but I am just a 'point and shoot' record my dive kind of photog rather than a more serious 'frame and compose' looking for that perfect shot kind. jmho,ymmv

 

[Lee Taylor]

digital is fine if you get better than 7 MP but i think film is something like 58MP?. However, is nice to stick an 8G or better card in camera and get hundreds of pics without having to load film, open the case once or twice a dive day. I like digital, but I am just a 'point and shoot' record my dive kind of photog rather than a more serious 'frame and compose' looking for that perfect shot kind. jmho,ymmv

Thank you very much for the information. I had no idea film is something like 58MP. It does make sense though. I have noticed that my printed 35mm film photos are extremely high color quality. Digital photos look great on the computer and the quanity and ease of use is a great thing. All that said, I just can't help but "stare" at the printed 35mm film photos. The colors are dazzling to the point of mesmerizing. They seem to be way above the digitals for striking color reproduction.

 

[Charlie99]

There is also a qualitative difference between film and digital as you do extremely large blowups. With the 35mm you start seeing the film grain. With a properly upsampled digital photos there isn't any film grain, but just a general loss of resolution.

You can easily and inexpensively see what happens by simply doing a very large magnification factor blowup where you pick a tiny portion of a photo and print it out as a 4"x6".

The typical film photo is not limited by film grain, but things like focus, camera/subject motion, and lens resolution. This is also true of digital P&S cameras -- most are limited by something other than the digital resolution of the sensor.

 

[MauiScubaSteve]

I have printed and sold slightly cropped pictures from my 5050, up to 12"x18". I know divers who have printed and sold many 11"x14" from 4040's.

When I print that large from 5 MP images, or slightly under 5 MP, I am using much higher unsharp mask numbers in Photoshop than for web images. Unsharp numbers should be higher for printing than web, no matter the resolution of the image.

Some of my images will eventually be printed at 20"x30" but only one to start. I did a bunch of web research on proper post processing. There is not just one camp as far a digital darkroom theory is concerned. Photoshop is fairly basic in it's ability to res up. There are other programs more popular with the Pro's.

A friend made many 20"x30" and larger canvas prints from Canon S60 images (5 MP) that sold pretty well, and I'm not sure how professionally those images were processed. You can waste a lot of ink and bog down pro-sumer printers if you send them too large a file size!

 

[alcina]

If you learn how to process your images correctly, or find a good lab to do it for you, you won't have any problems printing from digital.

Same thing as with film - a crappy lab will give you crappy prints, no matter the negative/slide you give them while a good lab will take the same starting point and give you something very different.

 

[kadleck]

... or find a good lab to do it for you...

Apologies for only quoting a very small part of this post, but as was said, this is another important area.

You can of course print with a decent ink jet printer from digital, and will probably achieve reasonable results; but a decent lab will definitely print with a superior (probably dye-sublimation) printer. It's worth asking them how they print digital, because it certainly affects image quality. I use an online service (PhotoBox) to archive my photographs. There are many places, so please ignore the endorsement! The good thing with these people is that you can privately share albums with friends / family (at a lower resoultion than the 'owner' can see). But the best thing is they also print (using the full resolution) and mail photos. I use this service a lot. From a 12 megapixel image they return excellent quality 15"x10" (or smaller!) prints, and you'd be hard pushed to tell the difference from a traditional film print.

btw, anyone who shares my albums can order prints too (again from the full resolution they cannot see). This is how these companies make their money.

 

[danclem]

Hi Lee:

I shot film for years, and went totally digital about three years ago. If you want comparable photos for enlargements, you most likely need to go the DSLR route. The pixel count is more of a marketing tool than science: there is no standard among manufacturers. What is most important is the size of the sensor in the camera. A seven megapixel DSLR is going to take far more detailed pictures than a seven megapixel point and shoot.

Digital also has another advantage in that you essentially become the lab that develops the image. It is initially a pain to learn Elements, Photoshop or LightRoom, but it gives you a tremendous amount of control over color correction, image clean up, and cropping.

Like Alcina says, for enlargements, send them out to a reputable lab. To do things right your monitor has to be regularly color calibrated, and your printers and scanners also need to be calibrated with your monitor. For prints worth framing, I find it easier and less expensive to hit my local photo shop and have them make larger prints. I see no differences between my 11x17 prints shot with film and those with my Nikon D300.

Have Fun,

Dan

 

[BHB ScubaTroll]

I use a very basic camera setup. I use the Sealife DC600 (6MP) with a single strobe.

I use Corel Draw X3 and Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 1.4 to edit, enhance and upsize photos for professional printing.

I recently tried a shop for printing my photos larger than 11x14. The shop I tried was MyPhotoPipe.com...

They were very professional and easy to submit through the Internet. I had a problem with the UPS delivery (punctured prints), and they jumped on it immediately and sent me the replacements that were received in two days.

The first print was enlarged to 24x30. It was a print my girlfriend took on our trip to Saba...

Cost was $29.99 for the print (Nothing special except it was matte and on an excellent Fuji photo paper)

I also had one done for me in 16x20...

Cost for this print was $15.49...

Both were edited beyond these gallery images, and both arrived exactly as submitted without pixelation.

Needless to say, I am putting together additional images I want to have enlarged... Some will be printed to canvas and stretched to frames before they arrive. I was very impressed with their service and product for my 6MP pictures!