Printing is still an excellent outlet for your photography and can bring your images to life. But when you print, how much does the number of megapixels your camera has actually matter?
The megapixel race is tired and has more or less come to an end. The diminishing returns on useful quality are extremely high and most people are no longer interested in getting the most megapixels possible. There have been myriad examples of how low megapixel cameras can produce brilliant image quality and this transfers to printing. But, what about when you want to print a little larger than usual?
The first thing to note is that you can print great-looking images with relatively low-megapixel cameras, especially if you know what you're doing. You can even print the images large and have them perfectly usable. But, if you want to have the highest quality prints at a reasonably large size, say A2 or bigger, then extra megapixels might come in handy.
In this video, James Popsys discusses his experience with shooting and printing images of different megapixels and how much of a role the megapixels play. Though Popsys does point out it's more of a difference than you might think, it's still not enough to convince me I need high megapixel cameras for printing purposes, though I admittedly do lean on extra resolution when it comes to cropping and product imagery.
I've lost some print sales because my files didn't have enough pixels to look great and sharply detailed at 48" by 32" and 60" by 40". Kinda sucked that a client wanted to pay me for big huge prints, but I couldn't make the sales because of the relatively low pixel counts of the files.
Of course uprezzing doesn't help because it only "invents" data via interpolation, as opposed to capturing the exact details that were actually there.
And of course most prints are viewed from close distance, regardless of their size. I mean, if a room is only 14' by 18', and there's furniture all around the perimeter of the room, then the prints are being viewed from a given distance, no matter how large or how small they're printed at. Large prints are NOT typically viewed from a further distance than smaller prints are, despite the fact that many will make statements to the contrary.
Good Video, more resolution when retouching portraits makes it much easier to make it look natural/invisible.
In addition to the issues others have observed, having the higher res images affords a greater ability to crop which is essential in certain genres such as wildlife.
Grain is s bit different, though (and yes they do!). Each grain is unique, and the mosaic they create can be aesthetically pleasing, and natural seaming. Digital is a whole other story. Every pixel is pretty much identical, and that uniformity can look artificial.
I hated graininess in film, so much so that I gave up on printing large back in the film era, because I was always so terribly disappointed in the results.
Grain in film caused me to have a frustrating love / hate relationship with wildlife photography for many years. Once digital imaging got good, circa 2005, it switched to a love / love relationship, and I changed from being perpetually frustrated to perpetually pleased.
Thanks! Yeah, the massive improvements in image quality over the past 15 years have worked out extremely well for me. Actually changed my life, because even though I loved wildlife photography, I just couldn't get excited or even satisfied with the results that film produced.
Really did not show much just talk and what he could see!!! I personally think it is software and today's
SW is really amazing even redoing some old 2005 point and shoot images. When I started with Sony in 2014 I choose the A7s due to it would bracket 5 at +/- 3ev, it was the HDR days, but today use 5 @ +/- 2ev for sunrise/sets mainly to get a small round sun vs a big blown out and to get the dark side of say driftwood/boats/buildings in even blue hour bright and white. Not a pro just a hobbyist but I get poster size prints made and change out every week. I do have the A7rii and A7iii and A7s iii also. All three do great at astro/morning/evening/indoor. I think it is first the lens, I recently got the 2470 f/2.8 and 70200 f/2.8 and compared to my trusty 24240 are about the same for sharpness is about 2 stops up from wide open that is the main thing as wide open is best for astro using Sony lenses.
I have, over the years, a lot of SW that gets better with time and the current race with Topaz Denoise/Gigapixel with other makers makes life even better than just two years ago (like to do sliders myself and not the AI).
I think a real print company print boss that will tell how it is done with any image sent in and how they get the results would be more informative, because I have read that if you use Tiff or DNG they convert to jpeg and sRGB anyway for color. There has to be magic in the print shop!!!
Yeah, for me, by far the biggest reason to replace my a7III with another a7RIII was the 18MP crop mode, which gives me two focal lengths from each of my bright primes when I'm shooting low-light events.
When viewing at 50% on a 32" 4K display (i.e. at actual print size) detailed cityscape images prepped for printing at 36", I can find almost no difference between the two cameras. If I zoom into 100%, the 42MP advantage becomes clear, but that's a SIX FOOT print. With 24" print files zoomed into 100% (i.e. the size onscreen of a FOUR FOOT print), the differences can be found if I go detail-hunting, but they're not apparent in 90% of the image.
FWIW, these images were carefully made on a tripod for exactly these kinds of comparisons. I shot every camera and lens combination I had at apertures from wide-open to optimum, at base ISO. Total of 329 RAW captures. I then processed with DxO PhotoLab 5 Elite, applied DeepPRIME noise reduction, exported DNGs to Lightroom, applied Super Resolution, then exported JPEGs at 300ppi and various target sizes with Standard output sharpening applied.
All this just confirms for me that, given my high-rez landscape work and my low-rez/low-light event work, the a7RIII is my Goldilocks camera. I coulda gotten along fine with the a7III, since I mostly print 24" or smaller, but the final push to the a7RIII was the 18MP crop mode.