Hi guys, I have a very big dilemma here. My friend asked me to shoot with her and 2 chosen photos will be printed in tarpaulins with a size of 4x5feet. My only equipment is a D40(everybody knows its MP count). Can it manage to produce acceptable prints with that size? Or must I use some software that enlarges the MPs? :( I've read before the issue about the stolen Photo by someone that won the Lee's Photo Contest, and the Photo that was uploaded was reduced to just 800x600 but still it was managed to be printed in a very large size.

Not sure if this is the right place for this post. Please Help me. thank you guys

tarp printing only needs at least 72dpi so if you paste your photo into a photoshop document that is actual size of 4*5 feet, your camera's output will be huge, and more than enough to cover the actual tarp size.

We've had quite a number of tarps printed out for our company this year, and I have coordinated with the company who does the tarp printing which is why I know this to be true.

1) PPI and DPI are not the same thing. Images with a resolution of 72PPI are indeed sufficient for tarp printing.

2) You don't have to copy and paste the image into a different document just to check. Checking the pixel dimensions of the image should be enough.

3) You can always upsample or interpolate the image if the pixel dimensions are insufficient.

HTH

Cheers!

Jo Avila

Hmm, I'm sorry but some of the terms are not familiar to me. hehehe. I'm just a newbie :(

So are you saying that everything will be fine even if the photos will be printed straight from my camera?(assuming that I will not process them anymore)

Thanks guys! Very quick replies, really helpful. :)

They should be enough. We used to shoot images for billboards on EDSA with a 6mp camera :D

Cheers!

Jo Avila

They should be enough. We used to shoot images for billboards on EDSA with a 6mp camera :D

Cheers!

Jo Avila
Everything's clear now, sir! :)

Is that so? But with only 6megapixels, can it produce acceptable photographs in billboards? :Thinking:

Thanks a lot!!! :)

Everything's clear now, sir! :)

Is that so? But with only 6megapixels, can it produce acceptable photographs in billboards? :Thinking:

Thanks a lot!!! :)

6MP for billboards? Yup. :D

Cheers!

Jo Avila

6 megapixels set to fine is good enough for billboards. What made me smile was when I was negotiating a wedding coverage for a client and they require me a 12+ megapixel DSLR shoot at maximum JPEG (12MP). I told them if they will use it for huge tarpaulin, they said no, they will use those pictures for 8 x 10 layout album.They even specified the brand of DSLR. Studios catering weddings told them during their canvass stage, the bigger megapixels produce super sharp pictures.

6 megapixels set to fine is good enough for billboards. What made me smile was when I was negotiating a wedding coverage for a client and they require me a 12+ megapixel DSLR shoot at maximum JPEG (12MP). I told them if they will use it for huge tarpaulin, they said no, they will use those pictures for 8 x 10 layout album.They even specified the brand of DSLR. Studios catering weddings told them during their canvass stage, the bigger megapixels produce super sharp pictures.

LOL! This reminds me of the time an ad agency was requiring my former boss to shoot with a Mamiya RB67 (he was a hasselblad user).

They were requiring a Mamiya for some complicated reason that wasn't an issue and wasn't even true :D

Or, another photographer told me of a client who required him to shoot all of their requirements with their memory cards (I think it was partly because they THOUGHT the cost of photography would be lowered). They also instructed the photographer to shoot in JPEG and to not transfer the contents of the memory card to a computer prior to editing.

They told him that the quality of the JPEG image might degrade when it got copied from the memory card to the computer since it was a lossy file format :D

Cheers!

Jo Avila

6 megapixels set to fine is good enough for billboards. What made me smile was when I was negotiating a wedding coverage for a client and they require me a 12+ megapixel DSLR shoot at maximum JPEG (12MP). I told them if they will use it for huge tarpaulin, they said no, they will use those pictures for 8 x 10 layout album.They even specified the brand of DSLR. Studios catering weddings told them during their canvass stage, the bigger megapixels produce super sharp pictures.

You should have told them you need to double the quotation to buy new gear. Or maybe they will do a 200% crop? He, he.