How large can you go and still have a sharp photo?

[ihavequestions]

Just wondering if you can go to something like 5 feet by 7 feet on a photo you take with a mavic 2 pro with a sharp picture? If not, what about a phantom? I guess the next step up would be a inspire?

 

[sar104]

Without upsampling that would be 65 pixels per inch. How sharp that appears depends on how far away you stand. You could upsample as much as you like, which would end up with an image less pixelated, but not significantly sharper.

 

[FormerMember07122019_2]

Don’t think of it as a drone, think of it as a 20MP camera. There are a lots of info out there on camera sites that address how big you can blow up a 20MP image.

 

[Meta4]

Just wondering if you can go to something like 5 feet by 7 feet on a photo you take with a mavic 2 pro with a sharp picture? If not, what about a phantom? I guess the next step up would be a inspire?

No ... you can't get a good seven foot print from the Mavic's camera.
Try looking at your image on Photoshop or similar and see how things look when you enlarge the image past 100%.

 

[ihavequestions]

No ... you can't get a good seven foot print from the Mavic's camera.
Try looking at your image on Photoshop or similar and see how things look when you enlarge the image past 100%.

What's the max you think? 5 feet? When I enlarge some photos past 100%, they look decent but not sure how it will translate on print.

 

[Meta4]

What's the max you think? 5 feet? When I enlarge some photos past 100%, they look decent but not sure how it will translate on print.

Closer to three feet is more likely ... if it's a very good original.

 

[brett8883]

Just wondering if you can go to something like 5 feet by 7 feet on a photo you take with a mavic 2 pro with a sharp picture? If not, what about a phantom? I guess the next step up would be a inspire?

Please don’t listen to any advice you’ve heard here so far. You’ve been getting information concerning the size of digital files images. However, I assume you are talking about a print which is an analog device. A photo printer use your 20 MP image to make any size photo print that machine is capable of making.

All a printer does is converts your digital file into a small negative and when the machine shines a light through the negative it exposes photo paper. Moving the negative and light further away from the photo paper casts a wider ray of light hence enlarging your photo!

I think people here must be thinking of alpha printers which aren’t meant to print photos as they are really crappy quality. On the other hand if you want to go all out you can get a large format inkjet print done by a professional printer but that costs hundreds of dollars and you just give the file to the printer and they will do what ever is nessesary and is best with their printer. That’s their job that’s why you pay them so much.

By far the most common form of photo printing is Photographic Printing, meaning using photo paper and a negative. Walmart, Target, Walgreens you name it this is the only kind of printing they do.

 

[Kilrah]

The post above is just as irrelevant and mostly even plain wrong, no common device nowadays makes an analog "negative" to print your photo.

The answer depends on the purpose and from how far you're going to watch the resulting print, people often tend to forget that. So you can't get an answer without informing about that.
If you're going to be watching your 7ft print from at least about half that you're golden.

 

[brett8883]

No ... you can't get a good seven foot print from the Mavic's camera.
Try looking at your image on Photoshop or similar and see how things look when you enlarge the image past 100%.

He’s talking about a print not a a 7 foot computer screen common.

 

[brett8883]

The post above is just as irrelevant and mostly even plain wrong, no common device nowadays makes an analog "negative" to print your photo.

The answer depends on the purpose and from how far you're going to watch the resulting print, people often tend to forget that. So you can't get an answer without informing about that.
If you're going to be watching your 7ft print from at least about half that you're golden.

Ok just saying go into any photo lab anywhere in the world and ask them how their most used printing machine works. Just saying.

 

[Kilrah]

I could get that answer if I time-travelled about 15-20 years ago, yes... But the film intermediate got dropped LONG ago for direct paper exposure.

Even film has been scanned and printed instead of being optically transferred to paper for decades...

 

[brett8883]

I could get that answer if I time-travelled about 15-20 years ago, yes... But the film intermediate got dropped LONG ago for direct paper exposure.

Even film has been scanned and printed instead of being optically transferred to paper for decades...

That’s what I am talking about! I was using the negative thing as an analogy. My point was that you shine a light onto the paper and enlargement is done optically. Using what looks sharp on a computer screen is irrelevant. Once you get to a certain resolution the size of your print is irrelevant. A $4000 Sony a9 full frame studio camera is only 24 MP. Not saying the Mavic competes with that on image quality but it does it terms of resolution.

 

[brett8883]

I maybe should have said it’s an analog “process of enlargement” to have been clearer I can see where it sounded like I was saying the machine was analog which wasn’t what I meant

 

[Congoblue]

That’s what I am talking about! I was using the negative thing as an analogy. My point was that you shine a light onto the paper and enlargement is done optically.

This is really not true. Nearly all photos are digitally printed nowadays, and digitally enlarged if required. Only photographic enthusiasts use optical printing. If you want a 5ft x 7ft print as in the original question, it would be produced by a large inkjet printer not an optical method.

 

[Kilrah]

I was using the negative thing as an analogy. My point was that you shine a light onto the paper and enlargement is done optically.

Again that is incorrect. Printers have fixed resolutions regardless of paper size. So bigger paper = more information you can make use of. You don't lose density by going bigger nor gain any by going smaller, the whole magnification concept is not applicable in modern tech.

Once you get to a certain resolution the size of your print is irrelevant

This is therefore not correct at all.

$4000 Sony a9 full frame studio camera is only 24 MP

Yup and my A7R2 is 42MP, that exists for a reason, the A9 is designed with specific purposes in mind over others (super fast burst rate rather than crazy definition).

Again what's needed to properly determine requirements for a given result is basically only what the size of the desired print and distance it's going to be viewed at is. That gives you the required printing resolution, which in turns gives you the required source image size (should be at least printing resolution * physical size).

I've had a 10MP, and actually pretty blurry picture printed on the side of a 50ft truck trailer. It looked great, becasue you're 200ft away when you're looking at it anyway.

 

[brett8883]

This is really not true. Nearly all photos are digitally printed nowadays, and digitally enlarged if required. Only photographic enthusiasts use optical printing. If you want a 5ft x 7ft print as in the original question, it would be produced by a large inkjet printer not an optical method.

I suppose you are correct he’s not gonna be able to find photo paper paper that big haha and yes I wasn’t talking about inkjet printing but like I said that’s the printer’s job. I live right next to a high end photo lab and they have a large format inkjet and they’ll print on metal or glass or whatever and so I go over there and pick their brains every once in awhile.

They were telling me they think it’s really funny when photographers send in these massive files they’ve upsampled thinking they need to hit the dpi for the size print they want because they have to down sample those to some normal size due to the fact the printer literally doesn’t have that much memory lol. The printer itself knows what it needs to do to make an image look good at the size it’s being printed. They say anything over like 10 MB the printer will can interpret to look good at any size. It probably has a width limit of 4-5 feet though. They say just send them the original size tiff and they’ll take care of the rest. I’m sure every giant fine quality inkjet printer has its own quirks like that and that’s why those guys are pros.

Anyway. Forget the optical printing you guys are right it doesn’t apply to this situation due to the huge size I’ll admit when I’m wrong. If it was like 48”x48” it would but not this big.

But I still feel stongly that if the OP wants to spent $800 to blow up his Mavic 2 20mp image to 5’x7’ in a photo quality large format inkjet printer that won’t be an issue just so long as it’s viewed from some normal comfortable distance with a tad bit of proper processing. Can we agree on that?

 

[kilomikebravo]

just so long as it’s viewed from some normal comfortable distance

Personally, I believe the viewing distance is the critical factor in this question. For a print that is 5'x7', the minimum distance should probably be about 20' or so. With good upsampling software, you can certainly get to the maximum pixel dimensions Brett mentioned regarding his neighbor. I don't know what dpi their gear can do but I believe at that minimum distance or greater, the print would look just fine. Think billboards.

 

[bobscheel53]

Don’t think of it as a drone, think of it as a 20MP camera. There are a lots of info out there on camera sites that address how big you can blow up a 20MP image.

30" x 40" is probably the max for a single image however you could take multiple shots and stitch them together to make a bigger print.

 

[astherev]

I print on a large format digital printer the Epson 9900 that goes as wide as 44 inches. I have produced 40 by 60 inch canvases at 240 ppi from an 8 MP image so if the Mavic image is the equivalent of 20 MP camera image you should be able to get a good quality large print. Almost all photo printing today is totally digital high quality inkjet. Pixel size is also an important element. The 8mp camera I used had a 30% reduction from the size of a full frame dslr so the 1 inch size of the Mavic 2 Pro image should work for large prints. A 20mp phone or small pocket camera would not because the sensor and pixel size is much smaller.
Andy

 

[Congoblue]

Anyway. Forget the optical printing you guys are right it doesn’t apply to this situation due to the huge size I’ll admit when I’m wrong. If it was like 48”x48” it would but not this big.

This is departing from the original question, but here in the UK if you take your photos to a photo shop to be made into normal sized prints, they are outputted by an inkjet printer. I don't know of any commercial photo printers who use optical printing any more.