[normhead]

The problem is the tax return came today... that coupled with the fact that someone in my house dropped the K-x, and it's broken.

Before this happened, I was thinking maybe take some of the tax return trade i the K20D now over four years old... and get a K-5. But now there's nothing to trade in. We have to decide whether to fix the K-x or toss it. We only had it a year, but the case is cracked and it's very sick puppy. Even if it's still under warranty, I'm pretty sure that crack is going to say we dropped it....

IN any case, now I don't have a trade in, or a second camera. SO the issue has gotten pushed up a bit... one camera with two shooters... trust me, this is not the prescription for marital bliss. So I either have to send the K-x off to Pentax... and wait for the quote, or just write it off.

Anyway... I was thinking before that I might look at upgrading to a K-01 for landscape photography, and just skipping the K-5 and waiting for the next Pentax incarnation. But, I always try and buy at the end of the cycle when prices are cheap, that would be now for the K-5 or 2 years from now for the next Pentax. By then my K20D will be 6 years old.

So then the issue becomes why do I want any more than my K20D... or a K-01 for that matter, and that come down to pixels. I know, some of you will pipe up and say "pixels" don't matter, to which I respond, "tell my printer that."

So then...I think well how much does my printer need?



And I go to this article and read this => click here

Visual Acuity and Resolving Detail on Prints

How many pixels are needed to match the resolution of the human eye? Each pixel must appear no larger than 0.3 arc-minute. Consider a 20 x 13.3-inch print viewed at 20 inches. The Print subtends an angle of 53 x 35.3 degrees, thus requiring 53*60/.3 = 10600 x 35*60/.3 = 7000 pixels, for a total of ~74 megapixels to show detail at the limits of human visual acuity.

The 10600 pixels over 20 inches corresponds to 530 pixels per inch, which would indeed appear very sharp. Note in a recent printer test I showed a 600 ppi print had more detail than a 300 ppi print on an HP1220C printer (1200x2400 print dots). I've conducted some blind tests where a viewer had to sort 4 photos (150, 300, 600 and 600 ppi prints). The two 600 ppi were printed at 1200x1200 and 1200x2400 dpi. So far all have gotten the correct order of highest to lowest ppi (includes people up to age 50). See:

They can see the difference but do they enjoy images more if they are printed at very high resolutions... they didn't answer the important question..

So what if my images would actually look better at say 300 dpi? Now I'm happy working at 150 dpi. We're not even talking about maxing this out at 600 dpi... we're talking about half that.

So essentially to get to 300 dpi I need a Nikon D800 or a Pentax 645.

But I look at my 23 by 33 canvases and honesty, they look razor sharp, even when I stick my 63 year old eye 6 inches from the page with my bifocals on.

SO the decision comes down to this...

Buy A K-01 to replace the K-x and pretend like the DA 40 lens cost $899.
Buy a K-5 and give the significant other the K20D.. I've already gotten in serious trouble today for leaving the ISO at 800... sharing doesn't seem to be an option.
Jump ship and go for a Nikon D800 and push my prints to 300 dpi

The only issue for me is , will it improve my prints enough to make them sell more? I'll do anything that makes me money... but Im not wanting to waste money.

I'm guessing when it all washes out, I'll probably the proud owner of a new K-5...

Unless someone can point me to a print comparison that would make a compelling case for going higher DPI on my prints...

I tried here > click here

Today's photo-quality ink jet printers have DPI resolution in the thousands (1200 to 4800dpi). They will give you acceptable quality photo prints of images with 140-200ppi resolution, and high quality prints of images with 200-300ppi resolution. Typically inkjet printers have three standard output settings:
- normal: 300 x 300 or 320 x 320 dpi
- high quality: 600 x 600 or 720 x 720 dpi, 1440 x 720
- photo quality: 1200 x 1200, 1440 x 1440 dpi, 2880 x 1440 and up
You might also have a draft or economy setting for printing text and rough drafts.

Maybe this is old stuff, but these numbers seem really high to me... I've never printed at 1200x 1200 DPI, and according to the above research, that is twice the visual acuity of the human eye, that would mean for photo quality the best I could do would be a 4x3 image even with a K-5... no one uses these numbers...

... continuing my search... maybe someone knows of a good article on this, or of a more reasonable explanation of how this should work. I just eyeballed a 23x33 canvas on my wall submitted at less than 150 dpi, upsized to 300 dpi and then printed and it looks very sharp.

SO here's the thing... click here for whole article.

But let's get back out to the main point I'm trying to make: if you set up a shoot correctly (exposure, camera settings, shot discipline, etc.), use the base or next ISO value of the camera, manage the post processing correctly, do only modest up-sizing (if any), and pick the right options from your printer driver, then you should be able to get that good or excellent print out of virtually any of the currently available DSLRs on the market at up to the maximum size the desktop inkjets can produce. Many of us manage to do better than that. I've produced and seen 36" prints from a 12mp camera that look excellent, though it takes a great deal more control over every variable from shoot-to-print to do that with any consistency.

and further more

At the risk of sounding self-serving, what I find is that most people get much more benefit from solid one-on-one instruction (e.g. workshops) than they do from upgrading their camera to the next number of megapixels. That's because they're not optimizing their picture taking actions, and thus suffer from that downstream. Getting more megapixels actually sometimes works against you, as it pulls out even more shot discipline problems and other issues you haven't mastered but now must deal with in the pixels you captured and wish to reproduce. My advice: if you haven't optimized your shooting with your current camera you can't make the assumption that more megapixels is going to help you get the results you seek.

Glad we could talk....

[DSims]

If you're making money selling prints now then you're doing well.

I think you can answer your question about whether higher PPI/dpi will help by using your existing equipment. Take two shots of the same subject, "zooming with your feet." When you print, one will be the whole scene at ~150dpi, and the other will be a crop of the same scene (not filling up the whole canvas, but with the subject the same size) at 300dpi. See if there's a worthwhile difference.


I really liked my K-x. High ISO performance is almost as good as the K-5. I think the main advantage with my K-5 is that I can recover a shot that I underexposed by 2 stops (maybe more) and make it look good. It's easy to underexpose with an old MF lens, if you forget to hit the green button or manually adjust the exposure. The K-r or the K-r's replacement (or a used K-x) may actually be all you need if everything else was good already.


There's little chance of knowing yet whether the D800/D800E's overall IQ will be as good as existing 12-24MP FF cameras, let alone MF models. The main attraction to me would be the chance to use lenses such as Nikon's 14-24.

[normhead]

Yes going to other systems lets you spend more money on lenses... but is that a good thing or a bad thing? I tend to think of and APS-c as using the best half of an FF camera and having functional high quality but lightweight lenses. If you saw the images posted for the K-5 and K-01, you have to have noticed that APS-c IQ is now pretty much the same as full frame. The things that aren't the same are neutral and in evaluation can break one way or the other. The other thing is printings exponential. 5000 Mp width gets you to a 43 inch print... but 7000 Mp width 58 inch print at 120 dpi... the lowest I can imaging attempting..but using those numbers, getting 1/3 more width, doubles your file size...so you really have to ask yourself if you need it. The only way you need it is if you're getting paid, or you're doing prints over 40 inches.

I don't at this point think it's even possible to make a case for FF unless you want to do 48 x 32 canvases or prints, or larger. And even then you may not need it. Most of the time, people stand further back from large prints so they don't need the close up detail to be perfect anyway. APS-c at 16 Mp is already overkill. As pointed out in the article, you can do things like stitch images together if you need larger files. Or rent a camera for a day. Looking at those K-5 and K-01 images... they are very good... how ugh can you improve on that?

Really, where is their room for improvement?

[Anvh]

This might help a bit.
Resolution for print viewing distance

[normhead]

The guy who produces my large prints uses a method by which he takes my files as low as 120 dpi, and upsizes them to 300 dpi for the best results from his printer. I can stick my nose up to those prints... so the whole issue is really complicated. But.. as things stand I'm comfortable with an upsized 120 dpi for canvas, and 200-300 dpi for glossy prints. But thanks for the link. It's valuable for anyone trying to understand the issues. Until we can get to 600 dpi which will apparently surpasses our eye's ability to determine detail.. those numbers work fine. And I really question the desire to do that. Art has never before done that... and it has never been necessary. You'd have to look at a few images done at 600 dpi to know if it's even worth the effort. Maybe they won't even look good.

It's late now, maybe tomorrow.

[Anvh]

This a nice quote from him about what you're taking about

At a recent trade show, where some of my black and white prints were on display, someone (you know the sort ;-) came up, pressed his nose close and declared that my prints were "over sharpened"

Fine, they were -- for a 6 inch viewing distance!

As I pointed out, I don't tend to do 26"x17" prints for people to view from less than a foot away. It's why billboard posters can make do with 10ppi.
Note, I produce my large prints to be enjoyed in a reasonable viewing environment. In general, people who want to look at them with a magnifying glass are never going to buy one :-) After several days standing around at a trade show, my reaction to the 'oversharpened' comment is to look in my wallet for the small map of the Pacific I keep, which shows the tiny tiny island where the people who actually care live - this is one reason it's not always good to put me in a public facing role for several consecutive days :-) :-)

120ppi should be fine for 60 inch viewing distance.
240ppi 30 inch

[gwing]

I've found the best reality check is a favourite print on the wall. My wall has a favourite taken with the old 1stD printed at 16x10 alongside ones from the K7 and it lacks nothing in comparison neither to my eyes or those of visiting friends. Every time I see that photo I smile and realise I just don't need to spend money on more pixels

Caveat: That image was only very lightly cropped (aside from that necessary for aspect ratio differences), was very carefully processed & upscaled to 300 dpi for printing. You can't get the same results with heavy crops but on this print you can eyeball it from inches away.

[demp10]

Any image that is technically correct (focus, exposure, sharpness, noise) can be printed any size with no quality degradation as long it is viewed from the appropriate distance (longer as the image gets larger).


Having said that, certain conditions help in making a larger image that can be viewed at a closer than appropriate distance and still get good results.

• Black-and-White images can be enlarged more since you do not have to wary about color noise.
• Adding "film grain" (essentially noise) can mask other noise artifacts and generate a more pleasing image with "smoother" noise.
• Printing on canvas, because of its texture, can accommodate low ppi count better and make larger prints.
• Using a good RIP (raster image processor) engine to up-size your images before sending the data to the printer can make a day/night difference. If you must use your image editing software to print, then just up-sample the image to the targeted output (e.g. 360 ppi) using the best resampling algorithm available in the software (usually bi-cubic).
• Use a calibrated printer and the proper profile for the paper/ink/resolution used.