It's Perfect

[willie_901]

Bill, I was just curious as to why you used 360dpi in your calculation. I think most of us figure 300dpi is full quality. So using 300dpi, then 14 x 21 x 300 x 300 = 24.5MP. Isn't that all that most of us need?

Rob,

All the art directors/marketing managers I encountered during may stint as a commercial photographer specified 300 ppi. So, I too assumed this was sufficient quality.

 

[sojournerphoto]

Great post Shane, and welcome

 

[580/Q]

Shane, what a great first post! Welcome to RFF!

- Murray

Thanks, Murray! It's a pleasure. Bill's questions are thought-provoking. "Yeah, why exactly am I doing "x" this particular way?..." So much of what I do on the technical end is open to question and probably a lot of simplification, too.

Best,

Shane

 

[580/Q]

Great post Shane, and welcome

Thanks, mate!
Shane

 

[580/Q]

I agree 100% whaat Shane says: well said, well explained. Welcome Shane.

Thank you, Robert. I'll resist the urge to edit and edit.... I always feel that I didn't take enough out - so I appreciate your kind words.

Cheers,
Shane

 

[580/Q]

^^^Agreed.

Dogman, I love your signature. Nothing is ever perfect, is it? Especially in light of the screaming terror that I won't get the camera pointed at the right things in time before it all dissolves... I think.

Best,

Shane

 

[580/Q]

Rob,

All the art directors/marketing managers I encountered during may stint as a commercial photographer specified 300 ppi. So, I too assumed this was sufficient quality.

Willie, this has been my experience also. One guy who was doing a textbook actually asked for a specific dot-bleed setting at 300ppi for the prints that were to be re-photographed for the book. I'll admit to absolutely not being able to tell the difference no matter how hard I looked. I think he was an outlier.

Shane

 

[580/Q]

This had some interesting numbers in it:

https://cool.culturalheritage.org/vi...olution_v9.pdf

Kodak Panatomic-X 170 lp/mm 8636DPI.

I went years shooting nothing but Panatomic-X, mostly with a Micro-Nikkor 55/3.5.

SO, the M-11M will get close to Panatomic-X.

Brian,

Panatomic-X, in an M-anything (I jumped from M3 straight to M6TTL) and a 21 or 28, for me was the gateway drug to medium format. I didn't stick with MF, though (and I never found Panatomic X in anything other than 135). In my quest for detail I went to LF as a teenager for a while and revisited it now and then. Too bulky and slow for this rugged and bumptious life. P-X was far more than good enough in the Leicas (or anything Pentax and Nikon in SLR that I ran -- it was never the film that held me back). There are some "forensic" emulsions that I came across that gave similar detail but... I wound up settling on Plus X in bulk after Panatomic-X became unavailable.

All this is moot in light of modern sensors that are out-resolving (so I'm told) many of the lenses that I use.
Cheers,
Shane

 

[Axel]

See my signature at the bottom?

No. Maybe left on the old site.

Sorry - I just found the field in my user prefs. that enables seeing signatures 🙄

 

[ptpdprinter]

If you read the Epson printer manual, it says use 360dpi because that is how Epson printers are designed. If you read the Canon printer manual, it says use 300dpi because that is how Canon printers are designed. There are technical reasons for those being their native resolutions but I don't know what they are. Maybe there is a difference in head spacing or nozzle diameter or pigment viscosity or firmware coding or whatever. You can use 300dpi with an Epson printer and 360dpi with a Canon printer if you chose to do so. You can use almost any number on any printer. The printer will then do whatever it has been programmed to do when presented with that number. I have an Epson printer and use 360dpi. I haven't done a comparison between an Epson print at 360dpi and an Epson print at 300dpi. Given my camera sensor and print size, I haven't needed the larger size that printing at 300dpi would give me, so I print at the printer's native resolution. Generally, my default behavior on technical matters is to follow the instructions, though sometimes I don't. For completeness, Epson has a fine resolution mode which changes the native resolution to 720dpi. There is a difference of opinion among knowledgeable members on the photography forums I frequent about whether invoking that feature and upscaling your images to 720dpi results in any improvement.

 

[580/Q]

If you read the Epson printer manual, it says use 360dpi because that is how Epson printers are designed. -.... - Generally, my default behavior on technical matters is to follow the instructions, though sometimes I don't. For completeness, Epson has a fine resolution mode which changes the native resolution to 720dpi. There is a difference of opinion among knowledgeable members on the photography forums I frequent about whether invoking that feature and upscaling your images to 720dpi results in any improvement.

Absolutley, but somehow I wound up at 300dpi and it is fine. At any viewing distance. Probably I was trying to stretch 6 and 12 MP files to 12x18 and.....

I blundered accidentally into 720 and maybe under certain circumstances it would really make a difference but how much is a "real"? Nonetheless, I couldn't see the difference although I think I didn't handle the bleed settings properly. And a bunch of other things. I was also distracted by the size of the prints, obviously. After recovering (the horror, the horror) and reprinting back at 300, I didn't do any real controlled A-B comparisons. At some point I kind of let go of that stuff as long as some technical image issue is not distracting me from the image itself. Keeping everything profiled and managed is battle enough.

I'd rather be shooting. And, I'll admit, that's probably why I use jpegs (with a lot of camera tweaking) for 90% of my colour work.

Best,

Shane