How large ?

[okhosea]

How do you know how large you can go in a print? I recently had two prints enlarged to 20x30. One taken with a Fuji 602Z and one taken with a Maxxum 7 on slide film. Both photos looked great (slide looked great also) when printed on a 4x6. I did a little tweaking in PS then shipped them off to be enlarged. I sent them to two different companies. The one taken on the Fuji came back great (the photo was of dark colors), but the one taken with the Maxxum on the slide film came back really grainny (did not show up in smaller print). Could it be the processing, could it be that since the slide print was of a lighter subject, could it be that ?. I realize a print of that size you do not stand on top if it to view, but even my 5 year old said it looked funny!!! By the way they were both taken at 400 speed. (I realize there is a slight difference in settings between digital and film). Just wanted some feed back if any could provide some.



Thanks
Trudy

[paulnj]

TOO MANY VARIABLE TO COMPARE THEM!
was it a perfectly exposed slide(louped on light table to check), was your scan optimal? was it pro slide film? was your file a 200kb jpeg or a 120meg tiff from the slide?........

more info needed to answer your question fully

[okhosea]

TOO MANY VARIABLE TO COMPARE THEM!
was it a perfectly exposed slide(louped on light table to check), was your scan optimal? was it pro slide film? was your file a 200kb jpeg or a 120meg tiff from the slide?........

more info needed to answer your question fully

Did not check the slide on loupe. Had the slides developed at a local pro lab. They scanned the slide to cd for me. I am assuming it was jpeg. The lab I send it to only accepts jpg files. It was WHCC. It was taken on Kodak Elite Chrome.

[another view]

Although more info would be helpful to figure out exactly what's going on, the most reliable way to have a print made like that would be to control as much of the process yourself as you can. You don't need a huge printer - but if you can do everything up to hitting the "print" button, you'll be in good shape. Get a film scanner or have a high quality scan made of the slide (high resolution TIFF file). Then tweak it in photoshop yourself so you know what the print will be like (assuming color corrected monitor, etc). A 20x30 print from 35mm is huge - there could be problems with the original that don't show up on a 4x6 or 8x12 print because you're magnifying it so many times.

Keep in mind that viewing distance on a print that big isn't three inches, like how most photographers evaluate prints! To see a 20x30 print, you'd probably stand 4' away from it. You're not going to get the same detail as you would with a medium or large format camera, no way around that. If the slide is absolutely sharp and perfect, you might get a decent print that big, but that would be based again on viewing distance.

Personally, with 35mm the biggest I've done is 16x20 and that was with a very sharp negative. That was as big as I'd ever go with 35mm. Medium format and my Fuji S2 can easily go larger - but keep in mind that the original (file, slide, negative) has to be perfect!

[Jeff82]

That's a huge enlargement. Most slides are scanned these days, which means that aside from the normal issue of film grain, you've got to know something about the dpi that the slide was scanned at. For most applications a print that has 300dpi would be considered to be "acceptable", and supposedly, the human eye can detect detail to only 200dpi.

As far as I know the better 35mm film scanners scan at about 4,000 dpi. If 300 dpi is the quality level you're looking for, then a 13x image is about the limit of the scanner. Very roughly, this might get you to a 16x20 print. After that, image degradation should start to become noticable.

Other posters make good points, especially that you wouldn't need the same resolution in a poster print as compared to a snapshot. So, the 300dpi I've talked about is really not written in stone. But, my point is, your problem may be not only a function of the film, but also caused by the limitations of the scanner used to reproduce the slide. The size of the TIFF file might give you a clue to the enlargeability of your image. For 8x10 enlargements (8x), I typically have file sizes of about 25meg

Also, 400-speed slide film probably isn't the best choice for significant enlargement.