Printing large from M10 or SL (100cm x 150cm, 40" x 60")

[peter.hamilton@bardwell-pr]

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I have recently made 20x30 inch colour prints (C-types, using the Printspace in London) from some Leica M10 files I shot. The quality was very high indeed. There was a very small amount of cropping from the original file. I don't use medium format digital cameras myself, but I have recently seen some 20x30 inch prints made from files originated with a medium format digital back in an Alpa camera, and I would not say they looked any sharper or smoother in tone than those from the M10.

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[reddott]

I offer this example for what its worth to this discussion.  This BW shot was taken with a M246 (color shot with a M10) hand held at ISO 800.  The final image is just under 14' wide and 10' tall.  It was scaled up in PhotoShop to print at 150dpi final size.  The resulting print is pretty amazing.  Very tight grain and no artifacts.  I know this is the M10 forum but I'm confident I could get an equally good print from my M10 especially at base ISO.  I understand the discussion is about native resolution and max print size, but that may be limiting the conversation.  Please also remember that most large blowups shot with film were usually produced by making an internegative, that is 35mm neg imaged to either a 5x7 or 8x10 positive and then same size negative and the final large scale print made from that.  This resulted in a much better quality print than going directly from the 35mm negative.  I've done same just digitally.

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ddi RECEPTION-1001913 by reddott2012, on Flickr

NYC-1000633 by reddott2012, on Flickr

[algrove]

One should also keep in mind a border for a print. Up to 24x36 PAPER I would print 20x32 avoiding printing to the edge of the paper as some might do. This also applies to larger and small prints.

[jto555]

6 hours ago, reddott said:

Please also remember that most large blowups shot with film were usually produced by making an internegative, that is 35mm neg imaged to either a 5x7 or 8x10 positive and then same size negative and the final large scale print made from that.  This resulted in a much better quality print than going directly from the 35mm negative.  I've done same just digitally.

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ddi RECEPTION-1001913 by reddott2012, on Flickr

NYC-1000633 by reddott2012, on Flickr

The interneg was only if you were printing from trannies or slides. It didn't improve quality as you were  introducing another analog step in the process, but was needed when you were trying to print from a positive medium. 

 

By the way, that is a really stunning photograph used on the wall! 

[mustafasoleiman]

I just had a show in London where I exhibited twenty images shot with the M8, M9 and M10 all at 105x70cm... All images were handheld and shot at ISO up to 5000 in low light...

Artistic quality not considered as that is truly in the eyes of the beholder, the technical quality of the images were good enough to produce some sales to photo collectors.

Here are a couple of shots of the show:

AdiM

durini.com

 

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Edited April 22, 2019 by mustafasoleiman

[reddott]

On 4/21/2019 at 4:53 PM, jto555 said:

The interneg was only if you were printing from trannies or slides. It didn't improve quality as you were  introducing another analog step in the process, but was needed when you were trying to print from a positive medium. 

 

By the way, that is a really stunning photograph used on the wall! 

I may be confusing my terms so please forgive me, you are correct about an interneg being used to print from a positive but the technique was used and actually is still used for producing large prints even from negatives.  Our company has built museum exhibitions and used this process both for analogue and digital when producing large scale prints.  The process was actually dictated by the museum.  This was done years ago with film.  A couple of years ago we did a Holocaust museum and printed large prints up to 120"x96".  By this time, all images were supplied as scanned images (positives) at 4"x5" at 300ppi.  We printed these to 8"x10" prints and scanned at high resolution - I don't remember exactly but I believe something like 3200ppi - and then printed at the final size.  I was incredulous about the process at first and had a test done where we compared this process to taking the initial supplied scan and scaling up in PhotoShop and printing directly.  The proof was in the results, the direct prints didn't compare in quality to the two step process.  It's also interesting to note that most of the archival images we received were originally shot on 35mm film.