Largest prints you've made from S5 Pro, and what's your sharpening approach?

ecmjazz wrote:

Hello,

I would like to start making bigger prints from a lot of my shots taken with S5 pro over the last several years. I will print on an Epson 7900, and made some test prints so far at 60x40 cm. but I am not very happy with all of the prints in terms of perceived sharpness and detail - some of them are OK with a radius of 1 px of sharpening, while others are not OK even with a bigger radius of 1.3-1.5 px., although most are shot on a tripod, with mirror-lock, same lens etc. At this print size actually the print resolution is as low as 150 ppi, if we assume that S5 Pro's output is around 8 MP, so maybe it is not capable of giving really good results, and I should print at lower maximum size - around 50x33 cm (180 ppi) to have a better result? Please, share your experience with S5, and what is the largest print with an acceptable sharpness you've been able to get from a single S5 shot!?

Moreover, most of my photos are in the 12 MP mode of S5 in order to gain the maximum theoretical resolution of 8 MP, but I am wondering what would be the better approach when preparing for print - to use the 12 MP version, and do the sharpening on it, or first resize the images to 8 MP (around 3600x2409 px), and then sharpen?

The largest prints of landscapes and architecture that were quite nice from my S5 and that are hanging in my office are a maximum of 13 x 19 inches or about 33 by 48cm.  They maintain an acceptable level of visual detail and were printed mostly on an Epson 2800 at 350ppi.  Have not tried any larger but I would imagine with experimentation one could go larger and I suppose there is a "golden mean."  Just use trial and error and see what you can get.  Its only paper and ink.

Bob