Printing Question 5d Mark iii

steve_

Hey we recently completed a series of timelapses for a company for use on their website. We shot using a 5d mark iii which was perfect for delivering the video.

However the client now wants to use some of the stills to print onto the walls in their office and this is where my confusion starts. Im not familiar within the realm of printing and i dont know whether the images will hold up when printed in a large format.

Having rang around to a few printing houses the general information ive been given is that the images must be 300dpi.

All the photos we've taken were shot in RAW with the dimensions of 5760x3840. My understanding was that RAW doesnt require you to specify dpi that dpi only comes into the equation when rasterizing the image. I might be wrong on this, again printing isnt my strong suit..
The wall dimensions that the images are intended for are approx 6m x 3m. The viewing distance will be around 1-1.5 meters

I have a feeling the resolution might not hold up when printed this size.

If anyone can help shed some light on this for me it would be greatly appreciated.

Effects

Depends a lot on your iso as well. 6m x 3m at that distance sounds like way too much though, even at 50 iso. I've had an image from a Canon 6D cropped and printed at about that size but it looks fine as it's up fairly high and viewed from the street.
I've also shot a six sheet, 1.2m x 1.8m with a 39mp camera but at 400 iso and it looked terrible (in my opinion) when walking past it on bus shelters.

Paulw

Talk to Steve in www.360-dpi.com.

If anyone can explain it to you, he can (and do the printing too).

I just had a nice print done, 1.5m wide. It's stunning.

steve_

The iso was at 100 for all images. Ill contact Steve and see if he can shed some light on the situation, cheers!

CabanSail

300dpi Phhht! Ignorant numpties reading from their script without understanding. I bet none of them even know where the magic 300dpi originated.

The dpi is the spacing of the pixels which you have in your image. At 300dpi your image would be a bit over 19 inches wide. At 6 meters wide (236") it will be down to 24dpi. Up close you would see the individual pixels but at that size it will be meant to be viewed from a distance and would be OK. Have you ever looked at an advertising hoarding up close? What you can do is interpolate the image, which adds more pixels to the image by estimation and this would make the final image look better. People who print large posters should be able to do this for you.

As said above, have a talk to Steve at 360dpi and he will steer you in the right direction as he really understands all this and doesn't just push buttons and read from a spec sheet.

Zillah

CabanSail wrote: »

300dpi Phhht! Ignorant numpties reading from their script without understanding. I bet none of them even know where the magic 300dpi originated.

The dpi is the spacing of the pixels which you have in your image. At 300dpi your image would be a bit over 19 inches wide. At 6 meters wide (236") it will be down to 24dpi. Up close you would see the individual pixels but at that size it will be meant to be viewed from a distance and would be OK. Have you ever looked at an advertising hoarding up close? What you can do is interpolate the image, which adds more pixels to the image by estimation and this would make the final image look better. People who print large posters should be able to do this for you.

As said above, have a talk to Steve at 360dpi and he will steer you in the right direction as he really understands all this and doesn't just push buttons and read from a spec sheet.

Thank you! This drives me nuts. I interact with people on this topic a lot for work and I cannot count the times people have demanded 300dpi or 600dpi as if it means a damn thing. It's a print setting, it doesn't say anything about the quality of the source file.

steve_

Cheers guys, i was surprised myself with the response i got from the print house. Because i did ask why it needed to 300dpi and i was literally told thats what it has to be for print that 72dpi is for web and 300dpi for print.

I would assume giving them my image resolution, intended wall size and approx viewing distance that i would at the very least get an idea as to whether its doable or not. But nope "its got to be 300dpi" :mad:

stcstc

ok


Most importantly you CANT specify 300DPI or any other DPI in a file, its PPI in a file pixels per inch!!

DPI is a print term and is not directly connected to the file

for example if you give me a file at 300ppi i will print it at 1440 DPI.


more importantly is the quality of the file, sharpness etc. as if you blow up an image it does tend to get a little softer.

as the old saying goes

SH*te in SH*te out :-)


if your stuck gimmie a shout