122 — How Big Can I print that Photo — Interview with Royce Howland

Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast #122 features an interview with Royce Howland where we discuss how large we can print our photos. These days cameras of all kinds are everywhere and if we want to make big enlargements from those cameras we need to know how big we can print the image before it starts to look bad. Royce offers up tips on how to make 'the best enlargement', 'a better enlargement' or 'a good enlargement' based on the camera, the printing material, the subject matter and some other factors.

Thanks to The Camera Store (The largest camera store in Calgary, Alberta, Canada)  for sponsoring the Photography.ca podcast!

To recap the math in this podcast the best images get 300 pixels per inch. 200 pixels per inch gets you better enlargements and 100 pixels per inch yields good results. To get an idea of the possible enlargement range, we divide the image pixels of our camera by the PPI to get inches of print size.

Our theoretical 6 megapixel camera produced images of 3000 x 2000 pixels. So a good enlargement could be 30 x 20 inches, better could be 15 x 10 inches, and best 6.7 x 10 inches.

If we look at a 12 megapixel image (from a Canon 5D for example) the pixels are 4000 x 2666.  So a good enlargement could be 40 x 26.7 inches, better could be 20 x 13.3 inches, and best 13.3 x 8.9 inches.

If we look at a 24 megapixel camera the pixels are 6000 x 4000 so we could have a good enlargement of 60 x 40 inches, better one of 30 x 20 inches and best one of 20 x 13.3 inches.

Links /resources mentioned in this podcast:

The Digital Negative by Jeff Schewe

Perfect Resize

Qimage Ultimate

September regular assignment - Shoot from a high perspective

September level 2 assignment - Shoot into the light

Illuminite - Photography exhibition by Marko Kulik

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