shooting fine art

[David Luttmann]

I'd have to agree with Bill. I routinely make digital photgraphs of clients murals using a Canon 5D and using it on a Sinar P with a Schneider 90mm Super Angulon lens. Sometimes I make up to about 9 such "scans" and stitch them together in PS. I then make the prints on my Epson 9600 using Qimage for the print processing. With Qimage, pixals can be re interpolated up to 49 feet lengths! Yes, that's feet. They may not be exactly perfect to the original, but I will put money that if you put both images under glass and stand three feet away you couldn't tell which is which. This can be done very economicaly as well. As for e-mailing large files...how does sending 1 gb files sound? There are several free services that will do this. "You Send It" comes first to mind.

Greg, first, don't get me started with Qimage. It's pyramid interpolation is a disaster when it comes to artifacts and maintaining detail in an image. The Photoshop routine mentioned at the DIgital Outback photography site does a superior job. As does the SAR software package using Backprojected Jensen Xin Li.

And just because you can interpolate to 49 feet and have an 8 dpi image to print (yes, I'm still laughing here) doesn't mean you should. Maybe it's fine for a bulletin board viewed from a mile a way, but we are talking about art reproductions here. I shoot a little such work with the 1Ds and stitch multiple frames using panorama tools. This gets me per pixel stitching accuracy. I stitch four wide to give me an image 15000 pixels wide. Enough for a 300 dpi 50" print. A straight 1DS MK2 image of this would only be 99dpi. Anyone who is satisfied with that has a pretty low threshold for quality!

Anyone stating that 1Ds MK2 can do a sharp 6 foot print would also try to sell us on stating that a 6MP DSLR gives sharp 30" prints....which we know they can't.....as the rez would be the same! 30" prints from a 6mp DSLR look like Cr@p....as does a 6 foot print from the MK2.

Let's geck back to quality reproduction discussion like the Betterlight or 4x5 scanned film.

[Bill_1856]

Apparently there are people who know how to print very large digital images, and people who dont. Since I have personally seen several such prints by Steven Katzman which are that big, (donated to the North Sarasota Library), and sharper UP CLOSE than my 16x20 prints by St. Ansel, I am here to tell you that it can be, and is being, done. I have no objection to anyone stating that he can't do it, but that doesn't mean that no one does, and I humbly suggest making room for the possibility of being wrong.

[David Luttmann]

Apparently there are people who know how to print very large digital images, and people who dont. Since I have personally seen several such prints by Steven Katzman which are that big, (donated to the North Sarasota Library), and sharper UP CLOSE than my 16x20 prints by St. Ansel, I am here to tell you that it can be, and is being, done. I have no objection to anyone stating that he can't do it, but that doesn't mean that no one does, and I humbly suggest making room for the possibility of being wrong.

69 dpi may have sharp edges because of digital's superior accutance, but it will lack the detail of 4x5 film.

If you think that a 6 foot 1Ds Mk2 images carries more detail than a 16x20 4x5 sheet film print....then I think you've pretty much summed things up for the rest of us. And as I run about a thousand prints a year in excess of 30", then I'd say I've probably figured it out. I'll just wait for everyone else who thinks that a 6 foot DSLR image is as sharp and detailed as a 4x5 16x20 to chime in to your defense. Let the floodgates open!

Good day Bill.

[Ted Harris]

One more point, there are a lot of museums and government archives out there spending hundfeds of thousands on purpose built scanning equipment to scan film of all sorts. It is very much a niche industry that we never her about but it exists and is flourishing.

[Greg Lockrey]

[/QUOTE] Let's geck back to quality reproduction discussion like the Betterlight or 4x5 scanned film.[/QUOTE]


David, you missed the fact that I "scan" up 9 times and stictch in PS. 9 x 12 mp is the equivilent to 108 mp. Since you like calculating dpi, calculate that against your 45 mp Better Light and at 1/10 th the cost

[David Luttmann]

Greg, I was referring more to the fellow thinking you can do it in one shot....which of course is ridiculous. Stitching is another matter altogether. I can stitch a number of shots from my old 3MP D30 and end up with a file that would slaughter 8x10 sheet film....but that doesn't mean the D30 could do it in one pass either.

[Greg Lockrey]

Greg, I was referring more to the fellow thinking you can do it in one shot....which of course is ridiculous. Stitching is another matter altogether. I can stitch a number of shots from my old 3MP D30 and end up with a file that would slaughter 8x10 sheet film....but that doesn't mean the D30 could do it in one pass either.

It's just a matter of how you use your "tools", David, and how much resolution the final really needs to be.