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5D for crisp 36" Prints?

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jhcampbell

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Is 13MP enough for crisp 36 inch prints? I've been using my 10D and XT to stitch panos that flawlessly print to 36 inches. These look great but it is difficult to minimize the distortions and time consuming to Photoshop out all the seams. Will the 5D keep me out of Photoshop or should I keep doing what I am doing?

--
James

Website-
http://home.comcast.net/~jhcampbell7905/

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
 
I'm sure it's in the eye of the beholder. Why not stitch together 2 shots to the pixel size of a 5d and decide for yourself if the definition is sufficient. It would be a rough approximation but worthwhile. -Bruce
 
I've personally never printed anything that large (someday though!) so I can't really say. However, the quality will definitely be a lot better than a 10D or XT, and even if you still have to stitch images together you won't have to do as many.

I've had some good experiences with http://www.jumbogiant.com
 
jhcampbell said:
Is 13MP enough for crisp 36 inch prints? I've been using my 10D and
XT to stitch panos that flawlessly print to 36 inches. These look
great but it is difficult to minimize the distortions and time
consuming to Photoshop out all the seams. Will the 5D keep me out
of Photoshop or should I keep doing what I am doing?
Click to expand...
what is your definition of "crisp" ? 36inch print from 5D will give you 121ppi.

How many 10D frames do you stitch to get enough "crispinness" and what's the resolution you get? Look it up and you will know if 5D is good enough for you or not.
 
Normally it is 6 or 7 images. I'll shoot a sceen that requires 28mm landscape at 75mm in portrait orientation. The resulting images are near 300DPI at 12x36 inches. There is more resolution then required for the print. I think I get a simular quality print at 200 DPI.

Here is a sample...

This is the sceen at 12x36 inches...



and here is a 100% crop.


voland said:
what is your definition of "crisp" ? 36inch print from 5D will give
you 121ppi.
How many 10D frames do you stitch to get enough "crispinness" and
what's the resolution you get? Look it up and you will know if 5D
is good enough for you or not.
Click to expand...
--
James

Website-
http://home.comcast.net/~jhcampbell7905/

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
 
jhcampbell said:
Is 13MP enough for crisp 36 inch prints?
Click to expand...
It depends what you think "crisp" means. Most people are very happy with larger prints from digital, whatever the original resolution. But if you want people to be able to walk up to your prints and put their noses on them, you'll need more than 12.7MP.
jhcampbell said:
I've been using my 10D and
XT to stitch panos that flawlessly print to 36 inches. These look
great but it is difficult to minimize the distortions and time
consuming to Photoshop out all the seams. Will the 5D keep me out
of Photoshop or should I keep doing what I am doing?
Click to expand...
There are a variety of automagic stitching programs that can take most of the pain out of stitching.

And if you start with more pixels, you'll get where you are going faster. For single-row panoramas, figure 4 extra MP for each extra frame with the 10D and 8 extra MP for each extra frame with the 5D. I'd expect it to be even a larger difference for multi-row panoramas.

Panorama Factory works well for easy, single line stitches. I'd think that with the 5D mounted vertically, 5 or 6 frames would make a nice 12x363 or even 15x36" print. (There's always some loss for cropping, so 18x36 from a single-line stitch might be pushing it.)

PTAssembler is said to be good for more complex things.

I'd think 9 5D images in a 3x3 matrix would make a seriously impressive 24x36" print.

And you can go even craziier than that:

http://www.clarkvision.com/photoinfo/large_mosaics/

--
David J. Littleboy
Tokyo, Japan
 
Print a crop and look at it from 3-4 feet. Another option is to uprez it using a good program.

I think that my 5D print of 19x13 is good enough, but I get critical of anything larger than that. My friends don't...
--
Yiannis

'We don't take pictures with our cameras,' Newman once said. 'We take them with our hearts and we take them with our minds, and the camera is nothing more than a tool.'
 
jhcampbell said:
Is 13MP enough for crisp 36 inch prints? I've been using my 10D and
XT to stitch panos that flawlessly print to 36 inches. These look
great but it is difficult to minimize the distortions and time
consuming to Photoshop out all the seams. Will the 5D keep me out
of Photoshop or should I keep doing what I am doing?
James
Click to expand...
Why don't you make a 25" print from the 10D or a 28" print from the XT and see if those are crisp enough for you. Those are about the same resolution as a 36" print from the 5D.
 
I've got a couple of 36 inch prints here off of my 5D, wide landscapes, and they are remarkably detailed, considering that they are from a camera and sensor of this size. Do they compare with the the 6 foot panaramic sitting next to them that was stitched from 7 or 8 shots off my 10D, probably not...in the sense that, very closeup, the panaramic looks like an 8x10 print in terms of it's detail. The 5d is only a doubling of the detail from the 10d, and considering that you would be cropping the 5d image considerably to obtain the panoramic aspect ration..(the 10d keeps its full resolution times 6 or 7)......it's really not in the same league so it will never match what you are used to.

Regardless though, the 5d is capable of some very fine prints at the requested size, I think it gives my 4x5 a run for it's money.
 
Barry,

I'm not looking to match the detail from the stitched photo. What I wanted to know is if the 5D would produce a sellable large print with 1 frame capture. It doesn't need to as detailed as the stitch but passable. IMO, my 10D and XT can not make a sellable 36" print of this subject with a single exposure. The XT is a little better than the 10D but they both fall very short.

--
James

Website-
http://home.comcast.net/~jhcampbell7905/

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
 
jhcampbell said:
Barry,

I'm not looking to match the detail from the stitched photo. What I
wanted to know is if the 5D would produce a sellable large print
with 1 frame capture. It doesn't need to as detailed as the stitch
but passable. IMO, my 10D and XT can not make a sellable 36" print
of this subject with a single exposure. The XT is a little better
than the 10D but they both fall very short.
Click to expand...
Like Barry, I have done single frame capture with the 5D to a 36"+ pano out of an epson 9800. The capability for very good saleable images it there, although it does depend on your market. At this size - and for close viewing in particular - you'll need careful capture technique and lens selection (I employ either canon L, zeiss, or leica with adapters on the 5D). For comparison most of my 36"+ print work is from scanned fine-grained medium format which can go much larger.

To answer your question directly, yes crisp prints are possible. If you do use downloaded sample images from the 5D for printing test, check on lenses and apertures employed to ensure a reasonable representation of the potential capability with your own intended lenses and settings.

-efd
http://www.efdavidphoto.com
 
Purely in terms of pixel count, the 5D only offers a 25% linear resolution increase over the 350D; in other words you can print 25% wider to the same quality. So if you consider the 350D to fall 'far short' of your requirements, I'd be surprised if you were happy with the 5D. (I know this argument is over-simplistic and there's more to perceived image quality than just pixel count, but it's a realistic starting point.)

Put another way, printing a single 5D frame to 36" wide gives an output resolution of just 121 ppi - not enough IMO to stand critical close-up scrutiny if that's what you're after. That's not to say 36" prints from the 5D won't look extremely good at normal viewing distances, just that they'll lack really fine detail.

BTW I second the recommendation above for stitching using PTAssembler - this is orders of magnitude easier than layering and masking in Photoshop, and provides superior results due to using PTlens routines for correcting geometric distortions.
Andy
 
IMHO it is NOT enuogh. Depending on particular subject/scene, taking technically perfect shot and carefully processing it you can expand 5D file to

a print 36" long. It will look GOOD, even NICE probably, but it would not be CRISP. Mean at close examination one should easily destinguish resolution limits at fine details.

From my personal achivements for lanscape and alike, 24"x36" was the biggest enlargement from 1Ds2 (with some "pixelation" already visible). Keeping in mind that 5D is 10-15% less resolving camera, I'd say 32" is the "theoretical limit" for it.
 
I'm going to say that definitely the 5d can produce very sellable prints at 36". Of course if your standard of excellence is lugging an 8x10 camera up into the hills, then you would disagree. But I know lots of photographers selling prints of this size shot on 6x7 or even 6x6, and the 5D beats them all in terms of detail. And forget about comparisons with the 350, 10d and others based purely on pixel count. The 5d's AA filter is substantially less "strong" than the lower resolution cameras, and thus the 5D reproduces delicate detail in your scene in a way that those cameras can only dream about.
 
I shoot mulit-row multi-shot pics with a 1ds2 (17mp) and there is no way 1 individual picture equals a multi-row pano.

They are soft and lack detail. The panos show every leaf, grain of sand, ant walking on the ground, pine needle. One shot wont cut it!

Stick with 13x17's.

 
I'm just curious :-)

What you do with your images?

or to put it another way, where are they used? what's the final output for an image like that?

Nice shot, any more of your work around?

--
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-Always give the client a vertical-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
http://grahamsnook.wordpress.com/
 
This is all certainly true, but the fact remains that the 5D outputs 24x36 at 120ppi, and I think most people would agree that 'critically sharp' requires somewhere around 250ppi. So, if your standard for 'crisp' requires being able to peer into a 36" print at close distance and see vanishingly fine detail, the 5D isn't going to achieve that from a single frame capture. OTOH if you want a 36" print that people will look at from a couple of feet away, the 5D will undoubtedly excel.

I think the biggest problem here as that we're not quite sure what the OP means by 'crisp'.
Andy
 
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