HIGHRES SHOT WHERE ARE YOU????

[Photoworks]

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1 hour ago, BernardC said:

Sorry to be off-topic, but I've often wondered what is the actual resolution of billboards, do you know?

I did some Web searches, and found a figure of 30 dpi, but I have no idea if that's a valid number. That would give 7200 pixels across for a 6 meter billboard, which is 35 MP on a 2x3 (35mm format) sensor. It's slightly more on a 3x4 sensor (most medium format, except for the Leica S), but still fits comfortably within the 8250 pixel wide sensor of the GFX and X1D.

One one hand, 30 dpi seems low, but it also feels very high if I compare the sense of resolution I get from a 37MP S-006 to what I typically see on billboards.

I would appreciate it if you could provide inside information 🙂

Back to the thread now...

There are different printers and different materials they print on, in any case they are all low DPI. But they usually run true a RIP software that make all calculations for you.
My clients print from 24MP and probably crop it too and print 12ft high window sticker and they look great. If you have any graphics make sure they are Vector files, like the one that come out of illustrator .

[BernardC]

57 minutes ago, Photoworks said:

There are different printers and different materials they print on, in any case they are all low DPI.

Interesting, thank you.

I always thought that human-scaled (1.5 to 2m) posters seemed more demanding, like the ones you see along airport walkways, advertising companies that don't explain what they do. They still show a visible matrix up-close, but they are printed on higher quality translucent stock. Those posters are usually heavily-processed composites, with lots of negative space for text, so each element wouldn't necessarily need the highest resolution.

[Jeff S]

7 hours ago, BernardC said:

Sorry to be off-topic, but I've often wondered what is the actual resolution of billboards, do you know?

I did some Web searches, and found a figure of 30 dpi, but I have no idea if that's a valid number. That would give 7200 pixels across for a 6 meter billboard, which is 35 MP on a 2x3 (35mm format) sensor. It's slightly more on a 3x4 sensor (most medium format, except for the Leica S), but still fits comfortably within the 8250 pixel wide sensor of the GFX and X1D.

One one hand, 30 dpi seems low, but it also feels very high if I compare the sense of resolution I get from a 37MP S-006 to what I typically see on billboards.

I would appreciate it if you could provide inside information 🙂

Back to the thread now...

Post #17

Jeff

[BernardC]

12 minutes ago, Jeff S said:

Post #17

That link speculates about what resolution people can see, driving by on the Interstate. My question was about what resolution bilboards are printed at.

While it is true that you don't 'need' more detail than people can make out, it's also true that not all billboards are advertizing motels and fast food, next exit on i95...

[Jeff S]

Never said otherwise....no need to print beyond people's visual capability, fine art or cheap ad.  In the age of screen views and pixel peeping, people seem to ignore practical viewing distance for prints, let alone billboards.  Post 19 gives an example using a basic Canon. There are examples of nice billboard photos using a camera phone.

Jeff

[The206]

This Ad is going to run on a lot of different platforms and sorry I dare anyone to show me a 5D mark III up against a medium format file and tell me they look the same, that is just a straight up ignorant thought. Might be fine for ambulance chaser lawyer billboards but not national ad campaigns for fortune 500 companies. These get printed at very high resolutions for bus shelter ads, in-store and bus wraps. I have seen 24mp dslr images blown up as in-store life size photos, they look awful. Do you think people shoot on 8K red cameras for the fun of it? Broadcast is still mainly HD but when you downsample that 8K image down to HD it looks waaaaaaaay better then if you shot at 1080p, this goes the same for camera resolution and sharpness. More pixels = more captured information = sharper images = better colour and dynamic range. So that photo you blow up even if I were to downsample my 240mp pixel shift image down to 24mp, it would run circles around a 5D mark III. That's just a fact. My job as a photographer and image maker is to seek out the best possible image for my clients. If you are happy with what you have, great. But don't send me links to click bait articles on Petapixel which is basically a giant site geared towards amateur photographers that love toilet paper DIY snoots and how to take the best photo with 9 strobes and a shower curtain.

[FlashGordonPhotography]

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1 hour ago, The206 said:

This Ad is going to run on a lot of different platforms and sorry I dare anyone to show me a 5D mark III up against a medium format file and tell me they look the same, that is just a straight up ignorant thought. Might be fine for ambulance chaser lawyer billboards but not national ad campaigns for fortune 500 companies. These get printed at very high resolutions for bus shelter ads, in-store and bus wraps. I have seen 24mp dslr images blown up as in-store life size photos, they look awful. Do you think people shoot on 8K red cameras for the fun of it? Broadcast is still mainly HD but when you downsample that 8K image down to HD it looks waaaaaaaay better then if you shot at 1080p, this goes the same for camera resolution and sharpness. More pixels = more captured information = sharper images = better colour and dynamic range. So that photo you blow up even if I were to downsample my 240mp pixel shift image down to 24mp, it would run circles around a 5D mark III. That's just a fact. My job as a photographer and image maker is to seek out the best possible image for my clients. If you are happy with what you have, great. But don't send me links to click bait articles on Petapixel which is basically a giant site geared towards amateur photographers that love toilet paper DIY snoots and how to take the best photo with 9 strobes and a shower curtain.

There's no free lunch. High res shot doesn't look like medium format either. If you want files that look like medium format. Shoot medium format. And there's medium format and MEDIUM FORMAT...

Downsampling works well for video but less so for stills. You don't get most of the benefits that you get with motion capture. Dynamic range doesn't improve. That's somewhat sensor/processor limited. And you're not working with anything like a log file. Only resolution. And not always. Pixel shifting technology can yield some gains in DR but 135 format cameras use a half pixel shift and don't get the large DR gains that multishot medium format cameras get. You will occasionally get artefacts and blending issues for no apparent reason. It's not a perfect technology. Mostly there's no real world difference from shooting a single shot and downsampling a high res shot to the same size from the same camera and lens.

If you want to get close to a medium format shot from a 135 format camera than stitching is the only real answer. We regularly use tilt shift lenses in a cage to be able to control DoF and increase resolution through stitching. And in situations that stitching wouldn't work, generally pixel shift won't either. I use pixel shift on my S1R where I can control DR with lighting and for reproduction work. It works well. A 187MP pixel shift file looks close to a 100MP file, in resolution, as a stitched shot from the same camera. OTOH that looks not quite as nice to a 50MP file from an X1D when printed at A1, which we can do in house. A GFX100 yields no real world advantage at A1 but does at A0. At A0 the GFX100 stomps everything the S1R can do. The difference is significant. And that's at base ISO. Medium format pulls further away at mid ISO's. High resolution 135 format cameras don't have the DR of their low resolution cousins, some of which are quite close to the GFX100. A multi stitch AND high res from an S1 would be a nice file. Better than the S1R. The S1 sensor is fabulous. A small step behind a small X1D sensor, just without Hasselblads colour science.

But.... These are fine art reproductions. Bus shelter boards, wraps and Duratrans backlits are not close to these in resolution, DR or colour fidelity. It's too expensive. You'd need a backlit to be like a piece of slide film at 6 foot high. Not going to happen. And raster technology doesn't use more resolution. It just doesn't have the gaps that a dot print would have. The *detail* is mostly an illusion. The highest resolution files we had to produce were for the shops in the international airport and the odd 6 meter panorama in a company reception. Most of these were on 135 for practical reasons. Some were shot underwater or hanging out of a helicopter.

While there are differences in quality shooting medium format, especially with the larger MF sensors) they don't really translate to commercial reproduction. There's really only two reasons to shoot MF commercially. 1. You want to. And 2. It impresses the shit out of Art directors. We regularly left a Hasselblad out when an Art director was on set, all the while shooting with 135 format. No one ever complained. I really enjoy shooting medium format. However, on a practical level, it was usually better to shoot on 135 with good lighting and a set of TS lenses. For anything that's stationary a set of TS lenses and great lighting is worth its weight in gold.

Gordon

[Photoworks]

3 hours ago, The206 said:

This Ad is going to run on a lot of different platforms and sorry I dare anyone to show me a 5D mark III up against a medium format file and tell me they look the same, that is just a straight up ignorant thought. Might be fine for ambulance chaser lawyer billboards but not national ad campaigns for fortune 500 companies. These get printed at very high resolutions for bus shelter ads, in-store and bus wraps. I have seen 24mp dslr images blown up as in-store life size photos, they look awful. Do you think people shoot on 8K red cameras for the fun of it? Broadcast is still mainly HD but when you downsample that 8K image down to HD it looks waaaaaaaay better then if you shot at 1080p, this goes the same for camera resolution and sharpness. More pixels = more captured information = sharper images = better colour and dynamic range. So that photo you blow up even if I were to downsample my 240mp pixel shift image down to 24mp, it would run circles around a 5D mark III. That's just a fact. My job as a photographer and image maker is to seek out the best possible image for my clients. If you are happy with what you have, great. But don't send me links to click bait articles on Petapixel which is basically a giant site geared towards amateur photographers that love toilet paper DIY snoots and how to take the best photo with 9 strobes and a shower curtain.

Wow aggressive language.

some days sharpness is not everything, when the printer doesn't print that resolution you may be blowing your sticking or multishot. I have Hasselblad Leica Sony and canon to use, and it is just a tool and use them all.

I shoot people that appear on billboards in Times Square , and yes fortune 500 companies  with any budget. I don't shoot with with shower curtains, but I am a professional for 20 years. 

I imagine you shoot still-life with your multi-shots. there are application that may benefit from it. I don't see myself doing then anytime soon with people.

I my reality I have 3 studio setups to shoot in 10-20 min. That is all the time you get this days for Portraits of very busy people.

 

[Jeff S]

4 hours ago, The206 said:

This Ad is going to run on a lot of different platforms and sorry I dare anyone to show me a 5D mark III up against a medium format file and tell me they look the same, that is just a straight up ignorant thought. Might be fine for ambulance chaser lawyer billboards but not national ad campaigns for fortune 500 companies. These get printed at very high resolutions for bus shelter ads, in-store and bus wraps. I have seen 24mp dslr images blown up as in-store life size photos, they look awful. Do you think people shoot on 8K red cameras for the fun of it? Broadcast is still mainly HD but when you downsample that 8K image down to HD it looks waaaaaaaay better then if you shot at 1080p, this goes the same for camera resolution and sharpness. More pixels = more captured information = sharper images = better colour and dynamic range. So that photo you blow up even if I were to downsample my 240mp pixel shift image down to 24mp, it would run circles around a 5D mark III. That's just a fact. My job as a photographer and image maker is to seek out the best possible image for my clients. If you are happy with what you have, great. But don't send me links to click bait articles on Petapixel which is basically a giant site geared towards amateur photographers that love toilet paper DIY snoots and how to take the best photo with 9 strobes and a shower curtain.

Since when are “bus shelter ads, in-store and bus wraps” considered billboards viewed at long distances (hundreds of feet) away, which was the whole point of the link?  

No need to be a snob about gear that many pros use capably for their similarly demanding clients.

Jeff

 

[BernardC]

12 hours ago, Jeff S said:

Since when are “bus shelter ads, in-store and bus wraps” considered billboards viewed at long distances (hundreds of feet) away, which was the whole point of the link?

Jeff,

As others and myself have mentioned, your link does not answer the questions that were asked. It's just a petapixel article written by someone who is speculating and extrapolating about things he barely understands. There were tons of these articles in the early days of digital, explaining why the writer's new 6MP digicam was better than 4x5 film... Seems ridiculous now, but back then anybody who called-out the faulty logic was accused of "not understanding!"

While it is true that you can print the words "gas, food, lodging next exit" at very low resolution by the side of a highway, it doesn't mean that all advertising photography is printed that way.

[Jeff S]

1 hour ago, BernardC said:

While it is true that you can print the words "gas, food, lodging next exit" at very low resolution by the side of a highway, it doesn't mean that all advertising photography is printed that way.

I didn’t comment on ‘all advertising photography’.  It was a bit of a tongue in cheek way of introducing the concept of viewing distance, which is a frequently overlooked concept in a pixel peeping world.  Of course high end MF systems are required for many pros; and so too can some professional work be done with more modest gear, not shower curtains. That’s all.  

Jeff

[HeinzX]

I just heard, the firmware updat with the HIRES feature, which was already promised when the camera was promoted, will come tomorrow. But it seems unfortunately tomorrow never comes. At least not in foreseeable future.