You can't print big with M43 they say...

I finished a "one year in the nature, one picture per day" project on 2016-11-16.

Some weeks after I was contacted by WSPGroup in Stockholm and asked if they could buy some of my images from this project to have as photo walls for two offices next to each other they were renovating in Stockholm City at the big sports arena "Globen".

They choose six images that they thought worked well to create the theme "concrete and nature" as that was the theme of these two offices.

Below are some images that are taken at the opening of the offices at 2017-04-27. Published with permission from WSPGroup in Stockholm.

Here you can see the Globe arena

And then you enter into the big shopping mall that also is there.

Take the elevator up and you can see the shopping mall from above.

Here is the entrance to one of the offices.

Once you are inside, this is what meets you. The photo wall image is from my gallery the 10th of July 2016.

Here is the reception desk. Also in the background, you can see one of my images on the wall.

Here winter meets you, from November 9 2016. The images here are all taken at the time of the grand opening of the offices, therefore the balloons.

Area for social interaction, the image on the wall at right is from January 10 2016.

This photo wall picture is actually taken in my garden December 22 2015.

Kitchen area, the image is from March 14 2016.

Dining and social area.

And here I am in front of one of photo walls, an image I took May 12 2016, I never thought that I would see it and other of my images this big printed as photo walls, but sometimes things happen in ways you didn't plan!

If you want to see all my 366 images from this one year nature project, you can find my gallery here: http://www.lattermann.com/gallery
(just click away the membership banner up in the right corner)

I have used a variety of cameras for this project and one of the images they choose is not taken with M43 but with my Sony A7RII. Can you see which one?

Grattis och bra jobbat!

cangopluto wrote:

Grattis och bra jobbat!

Tack/Thanks!

You have nice images in your gallery!

lattesweden wrote:

I have used a variety of cameras for this project and one of the images they choose is not taken with M43 but with my Sony A7RII. Can you see which one?

First, nice job

Anyway.

Based on this view? Obviously not.

I'd also assume that the printer used some type of software to upscale the images. I assume it won't add detail, but will obfuscate pixelation to a degree.

Looking at the math, printing 8' x 15', 16-20 mp should be somewhere around 30 ppi. 42mp is around 50 ppi.

Since it's basically billboard territory -- where the viewer isn't expected to be close -- it's not a problem.

My guess is that if you're making high-quality prints between 16" x 20", and say 50" x 70", and photographing at higher ISOs, and looking a little closer than the normal expected distance (3 feet or so), you'd notice.

Kind of a small shooting envelope, no?

SpinOne wrote:
Since it's basically billboard territory -- where the viewer isn't expected to be close -- it's not a problem.

Except it isn't ... clearly, those photos are much closer to viewers that billboards are. I have no idea how detailed those photos look close up from the pictures provided, but they have to look better than your average billboard.

My guess is that if you're making high-quality prints between 16" x 20", and say 50" x 70", and photographing at higher ISOs, and looking a little closer than the normal expected distance (3 feet or so), you'd notice.

I agree that people aren't going to walk up close and examine individual leaves ... but then, if they're not, it kind of begs the question as to how much more (resolution) you'd even need. It would be interesting to see those photo walls in person.

• Dennis
  --
  Gallery at http://kingofthebeasts.smugmug.com

Marco Zima wrote:

Is sensor size enough to say that you can or cannot print "big"?

Not quite the same as being able to stand next to the photo, though ... it's not like that billboard is going to occupy much of your field of vision.

• Dennis
  --
  Gallery at http://kingofthebeasts.smugmug.com

We get lower weight and smaller size and still as good IQ for larger than common prints, and as well almost as good IQ when going to ultra large prints like yours. To get really better for that size you need 80-320Mpix depending way of shooting.

And then they call that m4/3 users envy their larger sensors... Even when most of us has coming from FF or APS-C and has done all the tests and results speaks for themselves that 4/3" perform as well if not going to extremes ("black cats in a coal mine under candle light illumination at 5m").

Marco Zima wrote:

If you can with an iPhone image Is sensor size enough to say that you can or cannot print "big"? I don't think so:

Shot on iPhone 6 (1/3" 8mp sensor...) campaign

You can print any size you like with any camera you like.  How good it looks will depend on a huge number of factors, of course, such as scene, viewer aesthetics, viewing distance, visual acuity, display medium, viewing lighting, etc..

Marco Zima wrote:

But the bigger you print, the least you will stand next to the photo to look at it...

Except those photos are positioned where people almost can't get away from them. Even when I've visited trade shows like PhotoExpo huge prints tend to be far enough away where you can't get up close. (Prints in the 40x60" range are sometimes on walls where you can walk right up to them). I'm sure that those 40x60" prints I've seen from 36MP DSLRs are more detailed than these wall prints ... but I still find these impressive just because they are right where people are going to be standing next to them, often close enough to be unable to take in the entire scene.

My guess is that these prints work because they were processed and uprezzed to look good big and present all of the detail that's present in the file without looking pixelated, but at the same time, everything in the shot is magnified to such an extent that nobody looking at them is going to be expecting any more detail ... when fern leaves or needles on evergreens are bigger than life size, if they look sharp and clean, then that's good enough. And your eye is going to want to wander around the entire scene. It's still going to be vastly better than billboard quality.

• Dennis
  --
  Gallery at http://kingofthebeasts.smugmug.com

Tommi K1 wrote:

We get lower weight and smaller size and still as good IQ for larger than common prints, and as well almost as good IQ when going to ultra large prints like yours. To get really better for that size you need 80-320Mpix depending way of shooting.

And then they call that m4/3 users envy their larger sensors... Even when most of us has coming from FF or APS-C and has done all the tests and results speaks for themselves that 4/3" perform as well if not going to extremes ("black cats in a coal mine under candle light illumination at 5m").

...anyone who preferred the smaller size and weight of a smaller sensor system (not necessarily just mFT, but APS-C, 1", all the way down to a cell phone) to the advantages offered by a larger format would either get both systems or move down to the smaller format.

Do you happen to have any examples of someone using FF that would prefer mFT but refuses to give up FF for mFT?  'Cause I've never seen that.

Thanks!

The printer company that is specialised in photo walls says that a minimum resolution of one pixel per millimetre wall is enough. So 25 pixels per inch if you prefer that system. Which means that a 12 Mpix 4000x3000 pixels image will do for a 4 x 3 meter big wall.

The images I did vary in pixels per millimetre. Some were on the edge of being one pixel per millimetre and some have several pixels per millimetre.

They print with 600 dpi. The reason is that otherwise you don't fill the paper with enough color. So at the worst there would be 600/25=24 printer dots coming from the same original pixel.

But as you already mentioned, they have a special software, called Photoshop that upscales the image to invent some "in between" pixels. They tried some expensive special software earlier but found out that Photoshop did as well for this application.

I couldn't see the difference in any of the photo walls if they were from an image with just one pixel per millimetre or one with several pixels per millimetre.

Here is a close up of one of the photo walls. You can see the edge between two rolls of paper. This one is close to one pixel per millimetre.

This is a close up from the image that is made with the A7RII.

Also a close up from the image that is made with the A7RII, you can see the edge between two paper rolls.

Marco Zima wrote:

Is sensor size enough to say that you can or cannot print "big"? I don't think so:

Shot on iPhone 6 (1/3" 8mp sensor...) campaign

Yes, but, in the print days billboards were printed at 9dpi. When you're hundreds of feet away you can get away with it. Not so with the examples by the OP where you could stand right in front of them.

lattesweden wrote:

they have a special software, called Photoshop that upscales the image to invent some "in between" pixels. They tried some expensive special software earlier but found out that Photoshop did as well for this application.

Very interesting... I'll have to test this in PS. I've only tried making large prints (20" x 30") without resampling, i.e. seeing the difference between 200ppi and ~150ppi. It looks OK at normal viewing distance, while pixelation is obvious at about 1 foot.

I wonder if LR resamples, or just knocks down PPI as the print size increases.

Well done, indeed!

GR

lattesweden wrote:

I finished a "one year in the nature, one picture per day" project on 2016-11-16.

Some weeks after I was contacted by WSPGroup in Stockholm and asked if they could buy some of my images from this project to have as photo walls for two offices next to each other they were renovating in Stockholm City at the big sports arena "Globen".

They choose six images that they thought worked well to create the theme "concrete and nature" as that was the theme of these two offices.

Below are some images that are taken at the opening of the offices at 2017-04-27. Published with permission from WSPGroup in Stockholm.

Here you can see the Globe arena

And then you enter into the big shopping mall that also is there.

Take the elevator up and you can see the shopping mall from above.

Here is the entrance to one of the offices.

Once you are inside, this is what meets you. The photo wall image is from my gallery the 10th of July 2016.

Here is the reception desk. Also in the background, you can see one of my images on the wall.

Here winter meets you, from November 9 2016. The images here are all taken at the time of the grand opening of the offices, therefore the balloons.

Area for social interaction, the image on the wall at right is from January 10 2016.

This photo wall picture is actually taken in my garden December 22 2015.

Kitchen area, the image is from March 14 2016.

Dining and social area.

And here I am in front of one of photo walls, an image I took May 12 2016, I never thought that I would see it and other of my images this big printed as photo walls, but sometimes things happen in ways you didn't plan!

If you want to see all my 366 images from this one year nature project, you can find my gallery here: http://www.lattermann.com/gallery
(just click away the membership banner up in the right corner)

I have used a variety of cameras for this project and one of the images they choose is not taken with M43 but with my Sony A7RII. Can you see which one?

*yawn* nothing new here

a couple of decades ago folk were interpolating 5mp images to create billboard sized images without loss of res .