Large(ish) prints

[Clovishound]

I made the mistake of volunteering to give a talk at our CNPA meeting this month when the scheduled speaker had to cancel at the last minute. I will be talking about what I learned taking hummingbird pictures this last few weeks. I got the bright idea of printing one of the high ISO images at the largest size my printer will handle, 13 X 19. I thought this might be interesting for folks to actually see a rather large print from a high ISO photo printed to give confidence in using higher ISOs. I was also interested myself to see how this would look when printed. I recently purchased some 13 X 19 paper and have only printed one or two prints on it.

I was blown away by the detail and look of this image. I know 13 x 19 isn't as large as a lot of photographers print to, but I wasn't going to spend the money to have a very large print made. With the amount of cropping I did, I'm pretty sure this image would surpass 16 X 20 full frame. This definitely gives me confidence in not only my camera's ability to deliver high quality large images at higher ISOs, but also the ability of denoise software to get rid of noise without losing too much detail.

This is the image I printed. Not my best over the last couple weeks, but it was the best high ISO (7200) image I had. Yes, this is the same image I posted recently, obsessing about loss of detail in high ISO shots. I guess I have to get over that.

 

[tonye]

Hi, some very large prints can be made without much noise showing as long as you view the finished print from a distance you can see the whole picture, i never zoom in so close that i can see individual pixels, what's the point. That picture you have posted can be heavily cropped , printed at your max and still look outstanding. Worth a try i think. Put the magnifying glass away and enjoy your work. Best regards Tony.

 

[Woodyg3]

IME prints always look better than on the computer screen. Higher resolution and a natural blending of the ink dots seems to be the reason. At least that's what people who have much more tech savvy than me have told me.

 

[Clovishound]

Funny, I've always thought that screen images were usually better. Backlit vs reflective. Perhaps my printing skills just aren't up to snuff. I have had a few images that I prefer the print version.

Regardless of what you think looks better, it's nice to have a good image up on the wall. A nice mat and frame helps as well.

 

[BF Hammer]

Getting a photo print right is a bit of a gamble each try. You are tuning the photo color and brightness for an average computer display, which is a direct-view color science of combining Red-Green-Blue. On a print you are using paper that must reflect the ambient light on stock that can have differing reflective properties, and must convert to Cyan-Yellow-Magenta color science for masking reflected light. And consider the wide variety of light color temperature that can only be controlled by your selection of light bulbs or time of day.

Every year when I print my calendars for Christmas gifts I just upload the photos I carefully worked over and just hope for the best when I open the box. Shading / contrast really gets auto-adjusted by most commercial printers and it sometimes can ruin the details in the images. You just have to have some faith in the print driver (only use a driver downloaded directly from the printer manufacturer) to match the color well (some color will be wrong nearly every time) and be ready to reprint with adjustments made.

I wish I could have recorded some of my past conversations with customers regarding what black is. Black is Hex FF. Anything else is a shade of gray which will print as a mismatch if you use 2 grays of different Hex values layered on an image. Even when it looks perfect on your never-calibrated computer display.