How big of a pic can...

[csanantonio]

...A 3.2 megapixel camera produce (in inches). (I mean, a quality picture obviously). Thanks in Advance.

[Magic Mare]

I have gotten decent 8 x 10s on my old Kodak 3.2 mp and HP Deskjet 1220C
I got a nice 11x17 but even with sharpening it had some softness.
I have recently gotten a 8.1 mp Canon 20D and a Epson commercial printer 4000... will go to 17x22 really NICE... or if I get the larger printer later, I've seen decent 20x30.
But MP size isn't the only issue. A lot depends on what your printer quality is
and the paper and ink matter too. Archive ink type printer is essential if the photos are going on walls and have to last.

I see a lot of guys bragging about their great cameras, (understandably since they have some decent dollars invested... but then I see a crap printer sitting on a stand with a brand x ink refill kit laying next to it.
Doesn't make much sense to me. Cheap printers undo whatever money you shove into the camera. Old ink doesn't help either..

If you want more of an 'art' rendering, printing to canvas forgives a lot in that 3.2 MP size.
Just my input.
Magic Mare

[SIX SPEED]

Would a nice 5 mp cam make 20 x 30 Posters ? Thanx...... :D Nice and crisp?

[jessie25]

300 dpi is the bare minimum standard for most professional-quality printing. I work in advertising, and that's the standard we use for artwork.

At 300 dpi, you'd need at least:
-2.2 megapixels for a 4x6 print (remember, you need a bit more than this because of the different aspect ratio that necessitates cropping)
-3.2 megapixels for a 5x7 print
-7.2 megapixels for an 8x10 print
-14 megapixels for an 11x14 print
-And a whopping 54 megapixels to make a 20x30 poster.

Anyone who says that anything above 8 megapixels is useless should give that a little bit of thought.

Sure, you don't really *need* 300 dpi for most non-professional printing. If you're just making prints for a photo album, 150 dpi is probably plenty. On most consumer printers, the detail won't be noticeable. But 300 dpi is the bare minimum acceptable for printing on a professional-quality printing press using coated paper stock and 4-colour process printing. We usually try to go for higher; 600 dpi is sharper. This is easy when we're using very small photos in the context of a direct mail piece, for example; it's tougher when the image needs to be larger.

But digital photography still has a *long* way to go for poster-sized prints. I don't put much stock in the comparisons of megapixels between film and digital, because they're usually comparing scans of film and not the information contained in the original image. But IMHO, a good quality regular-film SLR is still better for professional-quality poster work.

By the way, a 5 megapixel camera would make a 20x30 poster at about 90dpi, if you do the math. Less if you crop. This may be acceptable in some situations but I don't think it will be that sharp or crisp.

[Spadhunter]

I made two 3.1 MP 8.5x11s the other day, to get the wight aspect ratio I had to crop to 1988 by 1536, basically loose 50 pixels of width.

I think is was aorund 180 pixles/inch, and they came out beautiful. I probably wouldn't go much lower, though. Maybe 160/in. minimum.

Depending on the type of shot you want in your poster you could take 4 or more overlapping shots and make a HIGH resolution shot in a panorama maker.

2x2 pano w/ 3.2 MP would end up around 12 MP after overlap
3x3 would be close to 26 MP
4x4 would be around 50 Mega Pixels!

There are shots over a Billion pixels that people made with 100+ shots combined!

[emalvick]

2x2 pano w/ 3.2 MP would end up around 12 MP after overlap
3x3 would be close to 26 MP
4x4 would be around 50 Mega Pixels!

There are shots over a Billion pixels that people made with 100+ shots combined!

Your panorama suggestion is a good one, but I think you are overestimating the size of the final shot. A good panorama often requires about 30%-50% overlap, so I suspect that a 2 X 2 pano w/ 3.2 MP would be more like 9 MP max. Of course that isn't bad, it's just something to think about if you are going to go that route. More photos with more overlap will give you a much better composite shot.

Erik

[jessie25]

By the way, don't forget there's more to this question than megapixels.

Compression is a factor. If you shoot RAW or TIFF, you can print with more detail after converting than if you shoot at high-compression JPEG. Even the "superfine" setting of some JPEG-only cameras will still have a visible reduction in image quality if you enlarge to a big print size.

Sharpness of the image is another factor. If your images are blurry, soft or overprocessed, it won't matter how many megapixels they are, they won't blow up nicely.

And of course, all the megapixels in the world won't make a nice poster print out of a photo that's just plain lousy. The camera can only do so much; the rest is up to the photographer.

[Spadhunter]

PTAssember is usually what I use. It's available free as a download and give you complete manual control over the whole process, if you want it. In addition, since it lets you pick match points, if you have some good ones, it doesn't take a whole lot of overlap!

[jessie25]

Since this question gets asked a lot, here's a chart to give a rough idea (remember, you need more than this in actual fact because you usually have to crop to the right aspect ratio):


http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b158/segacs/printsize.jpg

Of course, that's why people making professional poster prints are still using high-quality film instead of digital, but that digital has surpassed film for most other uses. 600ppi is rarely required for most consumer uses anyway - 150 should suit pretty much everyone making a home photo album just fine.