What size prints..

[JoshD]

can I realistically expect to get good resolution on with my Canon 450D Rebel? It's a 12.2mp I think. And is there a certain setting I need to shoot in?

Im going on a trip in the spring and I am sure I will want to make some prints afterwards

Thanks

[Mr Yuck]

I've produced crisp, saleable 16x24 prints with my 400D (10mp)

I've produced crisp, saleable 16x20s with a 6mp Powershot A540

Tripod tripod tripod. It allows you one or two print sizes bigger than handholding! Mirror lockup allows for another print size up over tripod when the shutter speed is under 1/30

[freygr]

can I realistically expect to get good resolution on with my Canon 450D Rebel? It's a 12.2mp I think. And is there a certain setting I need to shoot in?

Im going on a trip in the spring and I am sure I will want to make some prints afterwards

Thanks

You should be able to print up to a 40 inch poster if the photo is of good quality(75 dpi). You don't need high dpi on large prints as they don't get eye balled like the smaller photos. You should be able to get very high quality 8 by 10s at higher than 300 dpi. You never know when you will see the one in a life time shot, so make sure you have sufficient memory cards or a laptop or another device to off load you photos to.

[mjs1973]

I have printed (and sold 20x30) with my original DRebel (6.3mpx). I have gone even larger with my 40D. You should be able to make just about any size print, as long as the file is nice and clean.

[JoshD]

thanks guys, tripod is key I think. I need to get one

[JoshD]

ok newbie question coming up...

what do you mean by photo being "good quality" or "nice and clean"...also what is "dpi". I am assuming good quality and nice and clean are technical terms, not just how they look on my laptop? Is there a way to achieve this?

thanks

[freygr]

DPI is dots per inch, and you can say one pixel = one dot out of the camera. This is the native resolution, yes you can up the resolution in photoshop but you are not increasing the photos resolution, it may help printing good looking large prints by decreasing the pexelation looks.

A nice and clean, or good quality means that the image is in focus, with good contrast out of the camera. To get the best quality means you taking the photos in the cameras RAW format. I my self use basic jpg and RAW setting with my camera. I have a 6 meg a pixel camera and with a 4 gig card I get about 600 photos per card, with 12 meg image size the amount of photo would be cut in half to about 300 photos. Now if you shot in JPG you will get 20 times more photos per card. In most cases you will not be able to tell the difference between RAW and JPG until you have to deal with low light, or too much light.

The trick with JPG is you copy the file before editing and save the file as a TIFF or PSD until you have finished the editing. The reason way raw is better is the color depth of JPG is limited to 8 bits per color channel but RAW is 12 or 14 bits per color channel giving more dynamic range.

[JoshD]

Thank you for the thorough response. So if I am reading this correctly, the less post processing I do (sharpen, exposure etc etc) the better off I am for printing larger prints?

I am assuming RAW is a setting on my 450D I can just switch too when needed? I will check the manual.

Thank you again!

DPI is dots per inch, and you can say one pixel = one dot out of the camera. This is the native resolution, yes you can up the resolution in photoshop but you are not increasing the photos resolution, it may help printing good looking large prints by decreasing the pexelation looks.

A nice and clean, or good quality means that the image is in focus, with good contrast out of the camera. To get the best quality means you taking the photos in the cameras RAW format. I my self use basic jpg and RAW setting with my camera. I have a 6 meg a pixel camera and with a 4 gig card I get about 600 photos per card, with 12 meg image size the amount of photo would be cut in half to about 300 photos. Now if you shot in JPG you will get 20 times more photos per card. In most cases you will not be able to tell the difference between RAW and JPG until you have to deal with low light, or too much light.

The trick with JPG is you copy the file before editing and save the file as a TIFF or PSD until you have finished the editing. The reason way raw is better is the color depth of JPG is limited to 8 bits per color channel but RAW is 12 or 14 bits per color channel giving more dynamic range.

[freygr]

Thank you for the thorough response. So if I am reading this correctly, the less post processing I do (sharpen, exposure etc etc) the better off I am for printing larger prints?

I am assuming RAW is a setting on my 450D I can just switch too when needed? I will check the manual.

Thank you again!

I didn't mean "the less post processing I do (sharpen, exposure etc etc) the better off I am for printing larger prints?". For printing very large prints you will need to increase the size of the file in Photoshop so the printed DPI doesn't fall below 72 DPI (very large poster or bill board). Most post processing will not degrade the photo quality of the photo as long as you do not save in JPG file format or other lossly file formats. Viewing and saving is also bad, but viewing and closing is not bad. There are many settings in the JPG compression engine and the loss of quality becomes very noticeable at the higher compression settings.

Now I have rules which I use after I take the photos:
1) Preserve your originals, Do not overwrite with an edited version.
2) When editing never save to JPG, save to the native file format like PSD or tiff format
3) Backup all you photos to a removable media CD, DVD, or Hard drive (Not any Flash device) and make sure you overlap your backup so you have a minimum of two copies of each photo. Ideally have two sets one on site and one off site, which most of us don't do.