DJI Mavic, Air and Mini Drones
Friendly, Helpful & Knowledgeable Community
Join Us Now

Largest Picture Print

AdamDom

Well-Known Member
Joined
Dec 12, 2016
Messages
60
Reactions
39
Age
42
Location
Zhuhai, China
I'm looking at printing some of the photos I've taken with the Mavic and I wanted to hang them on the wall. What's the largest print size you could do while still retaining a decent picture quality? Has anyone tried this?


Sent from my iPhone using MavicPilots
 
Thanks for the chart. Anyone have any real world test?


Sent from my iPhone using MavicPilots
If your patient that chart Jixxer posted is spot on . My Mavic and Inspires both provide good 8x10. Any larger I found clarity gets quite soft However ! Like Jixxer stated Chart is a reference. Camera settings play a Huge factor in quality.
 
Last edited:
I get an error when I click on the chart. :( Was Jixxer's post deleted for some reason?
 
IMG_3959.PNG
I get an error when I click on the chart. :( Was Jixxer's post deleted for some reason?
I copied before it went away Remember this is a chart. Just a reference. So chart haters please relax ; )
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: FPVJunkie
dang, that's kind of a bummer that after 11x14 is the largest we can print for "best quality".
 
Shooing in RAW and stitching a sequence of panoramic images would allow for better quality and larger print sizes. I'm not sure if you can alter the "overlap" in the DJI go app or if Litchi may offer a better solution.
 
It isn't quite as clear cut as that table makes out. You can't just judge image quality on megapixels.

For example a 6 megapixel image from a 10 year old DSLR will be perfectly good printed at a larger size than a 20 megapixel phone camera.

And also, a Mavic image taken at a low ISO in good light will be printable at a much higher size than one at high ISO or in poor light.
 
  • Like
Reactions: SkyL4rk
I'm gonna chat with my dad. He's been doing Digi/photo and print for 20 yrs..

So spoke to him. See response below:

Regarding a 12mp picture, it depends on how you are printing it, on what type of machine you are printing—digital press, offset, large format. With large format, you can go down as low as 100dpi depending on what you are using the print for. Standard resolution for printing is 300dpi. If you are printing something like a picture of mountains, or people and you want to print it large, you can keep it at 300dpi, but your image size—width and height—will be smaller. With Photoshop, you can increase the size of an image, to a degree, without losing too much quality. I do it every day. So size is relative to how you print. I'm thinking a 12mp image might go up to 8x10 or so.
 
Last edited:
My reference is that a 8MP good processed output gives an image that's as good as you need in terms of detail at a viewing distance of half the support's diagonal.
That's the limit of what the eye can besically distinguish, as seen on a 4K display. If you want to pixel-peep further you'd need more, but then you're really concentrating on a tiny bit of the image as the above fills your entire field of vision already...

Depending on conditions you may need many more pixels form the source to achieve said good 8MP output, but to me a well processed Mavic shot can give decent 24x36 to 30x40. I have no problem watching one in fullscreen on my 50" 4K TV and viewing from the usual half diagonal, without feeling it lacks detail. There will be a bit of noise that would become less apparent at smaller sizes or greater distances, if you're 2m away which you'd be for a poster this size it's perfect.
 
View attachment 15849 I just printed a Mavic Pro photo from a RAW image at 11x14 and it came out spectacularly. I did, however, process it in photoshop and used an icc profile from my printing company which made all the difference. I agree that someone should program an app that shoots multiple images for sticking, not by turning the gimble but repositioning the drone. That would be awesome! Litchi?...DelaRun Cropped 11x14.jpg
 
  • Like
Reactions: Chirp
View attachment 4227
I copied before it went away Remember this is a chart. Just a reference. So chart haters please relax ; )
I understand it's just a reference but it's not a good one. My Canon 5D is 12.7 megapixels and I can print stunning 16x20 photos. Quality has a lot more to do with the size of you sensor (full frame or not) and the pixel density, not strictly the number of megapixels.
 
Did a 12 x 16 print today and both came out really nicely. I also did a 12 x 24 for a landscape and the quality is actually not too bad. I can see some stretching but honestly looks really good. I only notice the stretching because I know the original, everyone else has said they cant notice it or you have to get really close to look. Otherwise I was mostly impressed with 12 x 16./

I also go off this chart as it focuses on the Mavic Pro's 4000x3000 resolution and the DPI scale.

photo-enlargement-chart_orig.jpg
 
These charts are pretty useless now a days with the interpolation algorithms and such. Most people get carried away with "the quality" of print and they're not even willing to do all the prerequisite work it takes to produce the highest quality image. Shooting in RAW, retouching, etc.

I've been a photographer for a long time; what is "stretching"? Allow me to be the barer of bad news, no one is as concerned about the quality of your image if the content is interesting enough. I also do high end retouching and I see magazine covers, print ads, etc with terrible image quality and retouching. You know who notices that? People like me, regular every day people don't care. Take a look at some of the "shot with an iPhone" ads - I pass by these prints in NYC all the time and the quality is terrible. The content is great though.

You guys might be feed this elephant at the wrong end.
 
I'm gonna chat with my dad. He's been doing Digi/photo and print for 20 yrs..

So spoke to him. See response below:

Regarding a 12mp picture, it depends on how you are printing it, on what type of machine you are printing—digital press, offset, large format. With large format, you can go down as low as 100dpi depending on what you are using the print for. Standard resolution for printing is 300dpi. If you are printing something like a picture of mountains, or people and you want to print it large, you can keep it at 300dpi, but your image size—width and height—will be smaller. With Photoshop, you can increase the size of an image, to a degree, without losing too much quality. I do it every day. So size is relative to how you print. I'm thinking a 12mp image might go up to 8x10 or so.

Some good, mostly bad. I was doing magazine covers with a 4MP (Nikon D2H) camera in the early 2000's and printing 24x36's from a 12MP (Nikon D2X) Camera for private collectors. I moved to a D800 (36MP) and found that it was overkill. I recently sold all that heavy gear and transitioned to Sony mirrorless, which is surprisingly more noisey at lower ISO's and less noisey at higher ISO's than any of my previous cameras but when you know how to shoot, print, and package your content for its particular audience a lot of the head scratching that most people are doing about "megapixels" and "high print quality" goes away.
 
All very interesting information here . Why can I add ? Well if u use raw and aeb manual mode ( keep iso at 100 and shutter as fast as possible to have the sharpest image possible ) U will end up with 5 raw pictures. Take the same process and shoot the same thing 5 times ( totally of 25 photos) bring to a Photoshop and use Mean mode in order to bring iso down to 50 and increase sharpness to its limit, then u can get easily a a3 or a2 print size .yes it is a long process but remember that print is not digital
 

Attachments

  • 781F1BB6-B1D8-4061-93D6-8B9BF2A2F99B.jpeg
    781F1BB6-B1D8-4061-93D6-8B9BF2A2F99B.jpeg
    5.9 MB · Views: 100
  • Like
Reactions: FabienA and Simmo
My old canon s90 has the same size sensor i believe and could get decent 13x19 out of it. But as said above its a bit subjective as to personal tastes. My work around for stills will be to take multiple images to stich together into one large image to get a higher resolution image
 
Lycus Tech Mavic Air 3 Case

DJI Drone Deals

New Threads

Forum statistics

Threads
130,585
Messages
1,554,102
Members
159,586
Latest member
DoubleBarS