How big can one print MF?

Paul Howell said:

I don't how many sheets were used, it was done a budget, the ad agency and printer were in San Francisco, the shoots were done in Sacramento, so the talent (DJS) did not need to travel. The agency sent an art director to supervise, my shots were done in a rental studio with a rented 4X5 with my set of lens for my Crown, the other guy shot his assignment with MF outdoors up by Lake Tahoe, that for the beer brewery.

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30-sheet is a term for the size of the billboard, about 12'x24' about average size. Today, you can see "paint" size (12'x48') billboards that have been shot with a smartphone. I assume they have been worked over a bit, but the viewing distance is pretty far away.

I like 16X20's . For the most part use a Mamiya7ii with Imacon scans. The biggest have printed is 20x30 inches and that looks good. 24 x30 would probable be good too with a good negative on tripod. I like lots of detail and getting close to a print. I mat and frame also so mat board size dictates printing size. 40 inch mat board with some room for borders seems practical.

Pieter12 said:

30-sheet is a term for the size of the billboard, about 12'x24' about average size. Today, you can see "paint" size (12'x48') billboards that have been shot with a smartphone. I assume they have been worked over a bit, but the viewing distance is pretty far away.

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Roughly speaking, the long side of an older Nikon D8xx sensor (or equivalent) delivers more than sufficient pixels for the purposes. I'll let others back convert it to film equivalents, but it's nowhere near as much as people think. Bigger formats for origination are/ were mostly a noise to signal thing.

Printed wallpaper-style billboards are almost a thing of the past. Now they're just big instantly reprogrammable screens with square "pixels" up to a foot across apiece.

There are literally thousands and thousands of print billboards all across North America, almost all owned by one or two companies. They'll put whatever you send them on it - it generally has to fit in an email. And most billboard you see now have poor choice in text size, amount of text, contrast, and image choice because the people designing them have no clue how something backlit on a monitor 8 inches from their face translates to something printed viewed from 1/4 mile away.

Yes, in urban areas there are lots of digital screen billboards. But there are still lots that are print.

The digital ones might cost a lot to put up; but by able to flash two or three different rotating ads as a car whiz by, they are also able to generate a lot more money. I hate the damn things; they are distracting and add yet another road hazard, especially at night. The primary outdoor ad company in this area now offers only the digital option. Lots of pot shop, liquor, and casino ads; disgusting.
Yeah, out in farm areas you still see a lot of political and ambulance chaser ads done the old way, many unchanged for two decades, fading and peeling away; but you certainly don't see many along the freeways anymore.

Pieter12 said:

You've just added an extra step, and extra generation, an extra chance to mess things up. If the OP wants to print digitally, then a drum scan will be the best bet.

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Yes, an extra step gives additional chance for error, but i was wondering about an easier/more economical way to get this done.
One problem in scanning is that it also does introduce digital artifacts - you can reduce these by blurring but then you`ll also be blurring the grain and by that some sharpness. If you did make an analog print first, let`s say enlargement factor of x5, you probably could scan cheaper - and blur the digital noise without losses in sharpness.
Color, contrast and brightness of the analog x5 print musn`t be perfect, you should be able to adjust after scanning - the only thing the analog print should be is sharp. When enlarging with modern lenses to x5 this should be possible.
But i don`t have experience on that.

loccdor said:

I've done this and it is successful to get more detail vs. a straight flatbed scan. And it only requires a small print, I was doing 5x7. Just about doubled the dpi on my setup. It does introduce some differences in the contrast curve.

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Thank you for the comment, is the altering of contrast re-adjustable after the scan or is it that bad?

It depends more than a little bit on how you expect the shot to be viewed. If you're making a group portrait, for example, most viewers are going to "zooming" in on individuals, so they are likely to view the shot from a shorter distance. On the flip side, medium format film was frequently used to create billboards.

I've printed shots at 24x24 from my Pentax 645n and 120mm macro lens, and shots at 20x30 with my 135mm. One of my 35mm color print shots was printed at 48x32", but that was for display in a convention center at a height over 12 feet.

DREW WILEY said:

I hate the damn things; they are distracting and add yet another road hazard, especially at night.

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Agree, and they are terrible energy hogs as well. They’re awful all around.

I was re-reading a 70's Leica manual. One section was devoted in getting the most of a 35mm negative. So a 70's Leica (probably an M4 but it doesn't matter) and a 50mm Summicron. The picture was a 82X crop of a picture. So what can you get out of a 120 format. How much do you want.

miha said:

Anyway, what is a "mural"?

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wall-size print from:

late Middle English: from French, from Latin muralis, from murus ‘wall’. The adjective was first used in mural crown; later (mid 16th century) the sense ‘placed or executed on a wall’ arose, reflected in the current noun use (dating from the early 20th century).

At least some of the Kodak Grand Central Station 18ft X 60ft Coloramas were 35mm.

Harry Callahan said:

Yes, an extra step gives additional chance for error, but i was wondering about an easier/more economical way to get this done.
One problem in scanning is that it also does introduce digital artifacts - you can reduce these by blurring but then you`ll also be blurring the grain and by that some sharpness. If you did make an analog print first, let`s say enlargement factor of x5, you probably could scan cheaper - and blur the digital noise without losses in sharpness.
Color, contrast and brightness of the analog x5 print musn`t be perfect, you should be able to adjust after scanning - the only thing the analog print should be is sharp. When enlarging with modern lenses to x5 this should be possible.
But i don`t have experience on that.



Thank you for the comment, is the altering of contrast re-adjustable after the scan or is it that bad?

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Remember, this involves making a color print, not within everyone’s capabilities.

DREW WILEY said:

The digital ones might cost a lot to put up; but by able to flash two or three different rotating ads as a car whiz by, they are also able to generate a lot more money. I hate the damn things; they are distracting and add yet another road hazard, especially at night. The primary outdoor ad company in this area now offers only the digital option. Lots of pot shop, liquor, and casino ads; disgusting.
Yeah, out in farm areas you still see a lot of political and ambulance chaser ads done the old way, many unchanged for two decades, fading and peeling away; but you certainly don't see many along the freeways anymore.

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This is why LA county banned them along the highway.

DREW WILEY said:

Printed wallpaper-style billboards are almost a thing of the past. Now they're just big instantly reprogrammable screens with square "pixels" up to a foot across apiece.

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It was an education to watch bill posters juggling a paste bucket, massive roll of paper and a broom stick for applying the paste. Plus the obligatory Woodbine that never left his mouth.
All whilst standing forty foot high on a ladder.
No safety gear in those days.

Some members may recall the old insult, "You are as much use as a one armed bill poster."

Possibly not very PC , but a very apt description of some of the people I have worked with.

Harry Callahan said:

Thank you for the comment, is the altering of contrast re-adjustable after the scan or is it that bad?

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I think when printing in a standard way for display the contrast curve will become more S shaped, compressing highlights and shadows a bit in order to stretch the range and detail in the midtones. At least, that's how I always printed for display and what looked best to me.

If you instead wanted to print as more of an internegative (interpositive) step, a person might want to print with lower contrast by avoiding the "toe" and "shoulder" of the printing paper completely and rendering information only to the linear midtones of the paper. This would only be necessary if you wanted to make further edits in the next scanned print step and were worried about some loss of information.

In practice, I tried to get the contrast in the print exactly how I wanted the print's scan to look, so I did not worry about this. But it could be done.

Harry Callahan said:

One problem in scanning is that it also does introduce digital artifacts - you can reduce these by blurring but then you`ll also be blurring the grain and by that some sharpness. If you did make an analog print first, let`s say enlargement factor of x5, you probably could scan cheaper - and blur the digital noise without losses in sharpness.

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Harry Callahan said:

But i don`t have experience on that.

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Here's how it's done if you're working with a darkroom print:

Make/ get made a really good 16x20/ 20x24 darkroom print. You can get away with smaller prints, but those are better for publications etc. The MTF limitations (rather than the 70+ years out-of-date anachromisms about resolution) of working from a print do need to be respected.

Drum scan (if it'll go on the drum and work with the scanner illumination etc) or (better) cross-polarised repro the print - ideally at 300-400ppi. There are giant art repro scanners that will do a similar job too. High quality scanning of a sanely sized master print will not introduce artefacts of the sort all too common in consumer flatbeds.

Do your final work on the file.

That's about it. People are making this out to be a far more baroque procedure than it is, it just requires some realism about where money needs to be spent.

Lachlan Young said:

Here's how it's done if you're working with a darkroom print:

Make/ get made a really good 16x20/ 20x24 darkroom print. You can get away with smaller prints, but those are better for publications etc. The MTF limitations (rather than the 70+ years out-of-date anachromisms about resolution) of working from a print do need to be respected.

Drum scan (if it'll go on the drum and work with the scanner illumination etc) or (better) cross-polarised repro the print - ideally at 300-400ppi. There are giant art repro scanners that will do a similar job too. High quality scanning of a sanely sized master print will not introduce artefacts of the sort all too common in consumer flatbeds.

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Doing a high quality analog print and scanning this is certainly a viable option. however, it will be noticeably softer than doing a direct scan at really high resolutions (Actually even the analog print will already be less detailed, I did many tests on that).
This downside has also an upside, as the grain texture will be less pronounced but still looking very organic.

One problem with a direct scan is that there aren't many scanners that will scan 5000ppi and above.

Harry Callahan said:

One problem in scanning is that it also does introduce digital artifacts - you can reduce these by blurring but then you`ll also be blurring the grain and by that some sharpness.

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the best way keep the scan free of artefacts is to use a high quality scanner and oversample. this way it's possible to keep the original texture intact without digital patterns.

Harry Callahan said:

Thank you for the comment, is the altering of contrast re-adjustable after the scan or is it that bad?

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as long as the scan is of high quality (low noise, high bit depth) and it didn't clip the shadows and highlights, contrast can be easily changed later on.

however, with color negative film, the first color conversion is critical in terms of color rendering. If this isn't done properly, adjusting the colors later on will be very difficult and nearly always worse than if it was done properly in the first place.

"How long is a string?" The biggest silver gelatin print? Exhibition quality digital print? Image on the side of a bus? Billboard? They're all so different in intent, quality, viewing distance.

GregY said:

"How long is a string?"

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Here's Stephen Hawking's thoughts:

https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/taming-the-multiverse-stephen-hawkings-final-theory-about-the-big-bang

dokko said:

Doing a high quality analog print and scanning this is certainly a viable option. however, it will be noticeably softer than doing a direct scan at really high resolutions (Actually even the analog print will already be less detailed, I did many tests on that).
This downside has also an upside, as the grain texture will be less pronounced but still looking very organic.

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Long story short, I think that you're over-analysing the wrong areas that impact on the psycho-optical perceptions of the image. The main reason for making a very high quality repro of a master print is to try and replicate the complex interplay of the emulsions (and, to a point the optical systems of enlargement etc) that no scan can achieve because of the physical limitations of digital sensors. Over-unity low frequency response of film and paper emulsions and faster MTF fall-off at higher frequencies in the paper emulsions seem to result in a fully analogue print that can look both crisper (higher sharpness of big objects) and yet cleaner than even the best digital scan (and that includes vapourware touted as 'superior' to anything ever commercially available) - which while it might seem 'sharper', does so at the expense of increasingly unnatural (compared to a darkroom print) over-resolution of granularity in the highest frequencies. These rather complex trade-offs seem to have possibly been somewhat understood within parts of the now largely extinct world of high-end CCD/ PMT scanner manufacturing - as you go above 6-8000ppi, you are getting into (potentially very useful if you are designing emulsions, developers etc) analytical territory, not really imaging (which is unquestionably a problem if you want to make very large prints from scans) - and the problem of digital scanning not having the same MTF characteristics as film/ paper seems to start to become apparent - where optical enlarging still seems to keep on giving good transmission of film characteristics (note, not necessarily more resolution of original object) until you get to the optimisation limits. But that has to be set against the fact that the need for the sort of roles the specialist Rodagon-G's etc were intended for has been filled in the ephemeral advertising market by other approaches, none of which really need fed by more than 6-8000px on the long side. So, it's a set of compromises, most of which derive from the assumed limits of image size needs relative to quality from 40-50 years ago.

What I have seen is that in a properly (if accidentally) done double blind test, people tend to think a big fully optical print (done with a Rodagon-G) was an ultra-high-quality scan and the high end scan was a darkroom print, because of the way they complied with the errant preconceptions people have been persistently fed as dogma.

As a side note, there's also the problem of traditional interneg/ interpos materials having to be carefully chosen so as not to introduce too much MTF boost between camera neg and print, or it would start to rapidly look unpleasant (and, yes you can make bad HDR in the darkroom).

Overall, this rather distracts from the OP's original question of whether good 18x enlargements from 6x6 are possible. The answer is an unequivocal yes, with the only note of any importance being that the perceptual granularity of the Gold 200 negs will be closer to Portra 800.

I wish I could explain it as well as you have, Lachlan. But the benefit of a Rodagon G style lens only lies in big magnifications, not necessarily big prints per se. And with mural-sized work and commercial billboards, the anticipated viewing distances are so far away that it wouldn't make much difference anyway.

Everything depends on the original too. Having seen a lot of AA's big "mural" prints (mostly 40X60 inches enlarged from 8x10 film), it's remarkable how fuzzy they all were. Way grainier films than today; less precise lenses and cameras. And most of these were printed by a commercial lab far better equipped than his own darkroom, but at least with him being on hand. The viewers actually backed off 6 to 10 feet to appreciate them, whereas with my own relatively large work, they moved close in. Knowing the limitation of his medium at the time, AA had those big prints printed relatively soft and warm, and not in the bold contrast and cold tone of his regular sized prints. He even used matte paper. So viewers had to adapt to that same strategy, which actually works, because the poetic aspect of the compositions becomes their overriding feature instead. For the same reason, the Curator chose prints of mine (Ciba) which trended Zen and quite two-dimensional, even if highly detailed at closer inspection; it was an appropriate match for that softer fashion of AA's own work.

In other words, it's all relative. What does one want to say by printing larger? An advertiser just wants to say, Buy my thing, and gimme your money. A mere decor printmaker says, Want something big and obnoxiously loud to match your new red sofa? But I'd hope many of us would have better aspirations. Taste is way more important than overthinking or overspending just to play a tune only worthy of a kazoo.

DREW WILEY said:

An advertiser just wants to say, Buy my thing, and gimme your money.

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Not necessarily in that order.

Pieter12 said:

Remember, this involves making a color print, not within everyone’s capabilities.

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Yes, but i was thinking of having the print made by a good lab.

loccdor said:

I think when printing in a standard way for display the contrast curve will become more S shaped, compressing highlights and shadows a bit in order to stretch the range and detail in the midtones. At least, that's how I always printed for display and what looked best to me.

If you instead wanted to print as more of an internegative (interpositive) step, a person might want to print with lower contrast by avoiding the "toe" and "shoulder" of the printing paper completely and rendering information only to the linear midtones of the paper. This would only be necessary if you wanted to make further edits in the next scanned print step and were worried about some loss of information.

In practice, I tried to get the contrast in the print exactly how I wanted the print's scan to look, so I did not worry about this. But it could be done.

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I see.

Also thanks to others replying on this.