Some advice about an upcoming project ... please.

In the video the guy JR says he initially used a camera he found in the subway and that the posters are made from photocopies of photographs. Unless that is all hyperbole (which is entirely possible), you should be more than fine with a D700 or any other decent camera's output. I dont think you need to worry about supremely fine resolution.
 
taskoni said:
I am technically useless in this tread, but I have a creative point to make if I may 🙂

It could be nice if you compose and choose the place for your posters in the way that from a certain observation point they all blend in to a giant picture - just like a puzzle 😀

Regards,
b.
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We get advertisements for TV channel 4 like that, just appears briefly from one spot ... they win awards apparently

http://www.myspace.com/video/vid/2032330380
 
I'm not sure if it was mentioned yet or not. I would start with talking to the art director about "actual print size" requirements and then move on to the printer for file size requirements. Your skill and artistic leanings aside. It sounds like these two players are a big part of this project. Put it in their hands so you may deliver what is required. Sounds like a great project Keith. Have fun !
 
Congratulations! Wonderful news.

Given the viewing distance for a billboard sized photograph, a well-focused 12 MP file will work well. I assume (hope) you will have some sort of contract for this commission. In the contract specify you will provide in-focus 12 MP images. The rest is their job. Your clients should be able to give you some feedback on the aspect ratio(s) they intend to use for the final prints. This may mean all the images have to be cropped anyway.

For me personally, I would practice my framing until I got to the point where you could use a full-frame image 90% of the time. I would also be spending a lot of time planning for the creative aspects of the commission.

If they come back and say a 12 MP image is insufficient, then add the cost of leasing a camera and lenses suitable for the project into the contract. This sort of cost is common in commercial photography projects.

Don't forget, the X100 automatically creates panoramic images : 180 degrees Vertical : 7680 x 2160　Horizontal 7680 x 1440; 120 degrees Vertical : 5120 x 2160　Horizontal 5120 x 1440

With a tripod the in-camera stitching just could create some interesting images for your project.
 
I am pretty sure (correct me if I'm wrong) that JR was shooting his 28mm project with a film EOS. Take a look at some more of his videos and you will see him going back to some people he photographed in Paris with contact sheets in his hands (thought there was some TriX or TMax there). It may well be film and the viewing distance makes up for the grain.
On the other hand, I think the D700 should be good enough.
 
Obviously some sort of interpolation will be needed for a huge blow up, and remember the prints will be viewed from a much further distance than the usual 8x10, 11x14.

No dslr will be able to give a high resolution print at the sizes you're talking about.
 
Keith, my hunch is that you can do this easily with your full frame Nikon digital, but if you want to be uber-cool, you could use your 4x5 Graphic and have the negs drum scanned. Articles will be written about your retro/high tech hybrid process and you could become famous. Opportunity knocks, IMO. You read it here first.
 
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It seems to me that the technical aspects of the project can be sorted - some hassle involved but all surmountable.
How about issues with the Muslim community? And surely the project can't involve just the Muslim community? I think I would be getting more details of the human element of the brief and setting out to gauge reaction and possibilities. Are there obvious people to contact?

jesse
 
I used to work as a retoucher for a place that printed billboard sized advertisements; as people have said it all depends on viewing distance and how the photos are up resed. Genuine fractals, as someone already mentioned, will be your friend for this kind of work. Your D700 will be more than enough, in fact, on occasion, we worked with mobile phone photos!
 
FrankS said:
Keith, my hunch is that you can do this easily with your full frame Nikon digital, but if you want to be uber-cool, you could use your 4x5 Graphic and have the negs drum scanned. Articles will be written about your retro/high tech hybrid process and you could become famous. Opportunity knocks, IMO. You read it here first.
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LOL ... I had actually thought about that Frank, then I thought about film holders, dark cloths, tripods, the incredibly limited depth of field when you shoot the Crown really close, the cost of film, developing, scanning ... and so on. There's not a huge amount of money on offer!

I think if I was doing this purely for an exhibition of my own work though I would seriously consider using LF ... after all it's good enough for our Frank P and I think people's interreaction to this style of photography would be interesting in itself.
 
jesse1dog said:
It seems to me that the technical aspects of the project can be sorted - some hassle involved but all surmountable.
How about issues with the Muslim community? And surely the project can't involve just the Muslim community? I think I would be getting more details of the human element of the brief and setting out to gauge reaction and possibilities. Are there obvious people to contact?

jesse
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A lot of the Muslims in the village are there for educational purposes ... the place is like an enormous university mixed with residential living and retail facilities ... it has a lot of energy, I always enjoy going there.

Of course my focus won't be entirely on the Muslim community ... more probably on how they intereact with the non Muslims.

I was there a couple of weeks ago photographing QUT's billboard, I had a couple of hours to kill waiting for it to get dark and had a kebab at a local shop. I sat in a small park and watched people walking by (my favourite pass time) and was amazed that I had never noticed the amount of women walking around in full Burkas previously ... those things really draw the eye and they just seem to glide past you ... fantastic!
 
I just had a peek at the Inside Out site and it seems to me that any person/a group of people can upload b&w portraits + a project description and that they, Inside Out, pick and print the pics/project they like. Correct?
 
Peter Wijninga said:
I just had a peek at the Inside Out site and it seems to me that any person/a group of people can upload b&w portraits + a project description and that they, Inside Out, pick and print the pics/project they like. Correct?
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That's right, and this involves you directly with the global project. What QUT are doing is creating an independant mirror on a small scale for their own local environment.

How this will tie in with the global project is unknown by me at the moment. I know that they do a lot of collaberative stuff with overseas organisations with similar aims to their own but how this is being structured ... I can't say?
 
I'm probably going to be doing some stuff in Cleveland, through the help of JR's people. I think he shoots a Canon SLR and a 16-35mm or one of those, but in some of his work he was using a mechanical 35mm SLR with a 28mm lens. I'm planning on using my Pentax 6x7, but I don't think it's really necessary. if you're not looking for absolute sharpness, the format doesn't really matter.
 
Using film is an interesting option. Even a 35 mm film can be scanned with an ordinary scanner to create a file with more pixel density than any digital camera costing less than $20K.

While the film-scan pixels don't necessarily contain more information (i.e. many of the pixels in the film scan file are redundant) than a competent file from a 12 MP DSLR, scanning a low-ISO 35 mm negative is an interesting alternative to upsizing a digital image.

Food for thought.
 
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