How big can you PRINT your photos?

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Lots of people think you can only print at a certain size with a particular resolution or camera. Printing isn't about megapixels, it's about viewing distances. In this video I explain how...

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Thank you :)

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These are affiliate links, it costs you nothing to use them but I get a small percentage from Amazon when you buy something, so thanks! :-)

Gear:

[JamesPopsysPhoto]

Anyone interested in pyjama merch? No? Me neither...

[borderlands]

Megapixel escalation is down to the fact nobody prints anymore. They insert the SD card, hit the 200% button, head for the corners and go meh...

[ScottWilliamsPhotography]

True. I have a nice big 45"*30" print on my wall. Made from a deep crop of a 24mp image. Less than a quarter of the image used. After a few months of display not one person has mentioned anything about it not being clear enough. My rule is that if it looks fine full screen on my 24" monitor then I print it.

[CallMeChato]

Excellent post and here are my additions as I know this field well as I programmed my own dot angles in PostScript for colour seps on a Lino 100 with 128k of usable memory back in the 80's. Enough background. The concept of dots-per-inch really only affects magazine work. Modern ink-jet printers actually let the inks bleed into each other to create that photorealistic print. 300 dpi offset printing is ONLY for art magazines. A nice photo mag on the stand will print at maybe 120 or 160 dpi. Your Canon inkjet printer cannot really resolve a 300 dpi image. And, as per your point, I guarantee you that if you printed an image, tabloid size, at 72 dpi and another image set to 300 dpi, at 15 feet you would not be able to tell them apart because of the inkjet bleed. And finally, that legendary 35mm film resolves only 10 to 15 megapixels.

[JohnsJunk]

I've printed 24x36 with a $400 entry level 24mp Nikon and a $3600 12.1mp 10 year old 'pro' Nikon. They both look fine.

[psanto]

Completely agree with your point of view. People are going insane with the printing size vs MP. If you have a well focused image at 8 MP you can print it on A1 without any problem even if people go up to 50cm to look at it.

[theponkster]

I shoot with an old 30D (9ish MP) and have lots of large prints from it and they look great on the wall - and Im glad you enjoyed our wonderful country !

[MicroFourNerds]

Very well explained! You can get a lot more than you think out of a "few" megapixels 🎉

[PhotoBob]

THANK YOU! I shoot m43 professionally and O realized this when I left FF. I was so worried about size (that’s what she said) but I found I could print any size. I no longer worry when clients want larger prints. Many of mine hang in commercial offices and look great!

[rnbmeister]

I find it really easy to think of it like your phone and your TV. My phone has the same resolution (1080p) as my TV, but it is much denser because of the viewing distance we look at our phones from vs TV. Both look good though, and both show the same amount of dots.

I have a 50" print shot with my old 10D (6MP) and nobody has ever made a comment about the low resolution of the image.

[YoSpiff]

I work on wide format inkjet printers for a living (Just in case my previous comments didn't clue you in that I was a printer guy). At a recent trade show (the SEMA car show) I took some photos the first day with my Olympus E-M10 and after some minor tweaks in my hotel room, printed them at 52 inches wide for demo. They printed wonderfully detailed and people were asking if they could have a print to decorate their garages. A photo I took with a compact Canon G7x also printed with wonderful color and detail. Overall quality matters more than resolution.

[photom]

True! I’ve printed images from my phone in publications and elsewhere and they’re fine. No amount of resolution can fix a bad photo. Enjoy your vacation.

[bernardwest]

I'm glad to see Squarespace is now catering properly to photographers with variable image sizes. When I started on there a handful of years ago they used BLOW IMAGES UP! (not like explode, but upres). Such a no-no for photography websites. I sent a number of annoyed photographer emails to them about that, so I'm glad to see that my and other's efforts had some effect.

[lettochfilms]

So glad you posted that video. How on earth do you come up with something really useful every week. Most impressed! A photographer friend of mine told me that my G85 was easily big enough for anything I would ever want to print but you always think maybe should have gone for 20MP's or 24 or 30 or more and needed :-). And you're right. I have prints blown up to 24 inches wide from an old 12MP Panasonic FZ200 and the print quality is supurb. Nice cottage btw. Hope you & Emily enjoyed your holiday.

[zw]

You are so right... I made a portrait of a friend with one of my first digital cameras that only had a half a megapixel sensor. The 8x10 was beautiful up close and ten feet away.

[AcidicDelusion]

Megapixels and pixel peepers are the bane of the photography world.

[ryanjames]

I'm just in the middle of setting up my own print shop and had these worries. Thanks for the video, it actually helped out a lot!

[angryanimaldoc]

This is correct, however the giant 8ft prints you can get from an 8x10 negative are amazing. You can stand right next to them and feel as if you are in the scene. So you don't need to have the resolution, but if you do the results can add an fantastic look.

I would also add that sometimes people view prints at the proper distance, but then want to explore the details more closely, when they move closer to inspect, the image breaks down.

[justoalejandrogonzalez]

Well... I didn't have a clue about this information. This was simply, clear and short. Another well explained video. And the Popsys trade mark, at least one good laugh at some point... ('I'd be like I'm watching tennis') ...brillant.

[NickPowellPhotography]

If I could post a standing ovation GIF here... I would. The whole megaplixel war does my head in!! Bravo Sir!