Jorge Torralba said:
I would like to know what size prints people have been getting out of their RD1 with STUNNING results. I mean stunning and not just ok. I am considering a switch to this camera and would like to know how big i can go for enlargements of fine detail.
I guess that depends on what stuns you! And that's not a frivolous answer -- a lot of factors go into the subjective impression of print quality, including color saturation, contrast, fineness of subject detail, type of paper stock, etc.
A lot of things besides camera type contribute to those factors -- so to me, the only sensible way of answering this question in a way that's
specific to the R-D 1 is to consider the characteristics of its imager.
Here's a rule of thumb from the graphic arts industry that I've found useful when applied to any type of continuous-tone digital image:
-- When viewing
critically at normal reading distance, the eye is incapable of distinguishing between elements smaller than about 1/300 of an inch. That's why 300 dots per inch was the magic number for commercializing laser printers. It means that even when looking carefully, you won't be able to distinguish between a pixel image and a continuous-tone image as long as the pixel image has at least 300 pixels per inch.
Since the R-D 1 (or any other 6-megapixel camera) produces an image roughly 3000x2000 pixels, that means you can get prints up to about 6.7 x 10 inches that meet this criterion of being indistinguishable as pixel images.
-- For
normal (non-critical) viewing at normal reading distance, the criterion drops to about 180-200 pixels per inch. This corresponds roughly to the rosette size you see from the very highest quality printed materials (by "printed" I mean "reproduced on a printing press.") If you think about photographs which you've seen reproduced in high-quality publications, you'll see that this image level is still capable of producing what many people consider "stunning" quality.
At this quality level, a 6-megapixel image can be enlarged to about 10 x 15 inches. That's been my experience in doing advertising posters with both the R-D1 and a Nikon D100 -- a tabloid-size (11x17 inch) poster is about the biggest I feel comfortable going with a 6-megapixel image, since I have to assume that the poster may be viewed from reading distance (by people who want to read the text.)
-- For viewing at greater than reading distance, the data requirement drops farther; my own experience has been that fine-art prints for wall display (which usually are viewed from a distance of at least two to three feet) can produce what most viewers would regard as "stunning" quality with data sizes as low as 100-120 pixels per inch!
This means that most people would be impressed by a good 6-megapixel image as large as 20x30 inches, as long as they were viewing it from a few feet away.
Note that reproduction method plays a role too -- and that's especially important in the case of a digital camera, since there's no NON-digital way of reproducing the image!
Specifically, for photographic display, you're probably going to be making your larger prints on an inkjet printer, which does
not produce a continuous-tone image; instead, it simulates continuous tones by overlapping different ink dots.
My own observation has been that even on critical viewing, I can't detect any difference between inkjet prints at image densities of 300 pixels per inch and 240 pixels per inch. This means that if you consider an inkjet printer capable of producing "stunning" results, you can probably push all the above size ranges about 25% larger.
