Greatest size enlargement ==> Optical methods only. No scanning

Sirius Glass · Sep 17, 2009

I want to know the greatest size enlargement for black & white and color.

Please note: I do not want this thread closed so ==> Optical methods only. No scanning.

If your are temped to post about scanning, please hit the delete key!

For black & white:
Film format: 35mm, MF [please specify: 6x6, 6x7,...], LF [please specify size]
Film type [example: Kodak Plus X]
Developer and developer strength
Final Print size

For color print:
Film format: 35mm, MF [please specify: 6x6, 6x7,...], LF [please specify size]
Film type [example: Kodak Portra VC]
Process if applicable [Ilfordchrome]
Final Print size

For color slides to print:
Film format: 35mm, MF [please specify: 6x6, 6x7,...], LF [please specify size]
Film type [example: Kodak Ektachrome 200]
Process if applicable [Ilfordchrome]
Final Print size

Please remember: Not one word about any digital methods!

Note to Moderators: If you see any posting with digital method on this thread please delete the posting immediately and post a warning if you deem it necessary. Please do not lock the thread because someone cannot play by the APUG rules. Thank you.

It has been suggested via a PM that using a polarizer will help saturate colors. It does in general, but I have not found that to be much help for slot canyons and red rock. What works and what does not work?

Steve

railwayman3 · Sep 17, 2009

There are a lot of factors in the maximum size of enlargement, one obviously being the sharpness of the negative, and equally obviously the size ...other things being equal, "a good big 'un will always beat a good little 'un'." To take an extreme example, you won't get a pinsharp 20x16 from a Minox negative, but I've seen such prints, from 400ASA film, where the grain and lack of definition add to the atmosphere of the shot.

And another factor will be viewing distance, one only has to think of Kodak's huge display transparencies enlarged from 35mm. These looked great when viewed from many feet away, yet clearly appeared very unsharp and grainy if you went close.

I'm not sure that you're going to get any definitive answer with all these variables, but I look forward to comments and discussion .

keithwms · Sep 17, 2009

There is no limit- practical nor aesthetic nor fundamental.

Okay, for colour you are limited by the size of the paper, be it RA4 or ilfo or whatever, but there are ways around that. With b&w there isn't even a paper limit, since you can go and paint liquid emulsion on just about any wall... or bed sheet

As I mentioned in a recent blog, I do think there are more fundamental reasons to think about the scale of a print, and these reasons are much more important than the tecnical issue of how big you can go.

Christiaan Phleger · Sep 17, 2009

I saw some Salgado prints that were Very Large, and Very sharp, form 35mm negs, looked to be TMZ3200, from his 'Workers' era. At least 4x6 feet, looked to be full frame, wet prints, most likely RC paper from rolls. Very impressive, I'd like to see the darkroom that made that set of prints.

Ian Grant · Sep 17, 2009

I've done 12-15ft wide off a 35mm neg, The client said it was grainy Tough he placed the order he did pay up !!!

Ian

Bruce Watson · Sep 17, 2009

keithwms said:
There is no limit- practical nor aesthetic nor fundamental.

Okay, for colour you are limited by the size of the paper, be it RA4 or ilfo or whatever, but there are ways around that. With b&w there isn't even a paper limit, since you can go and paint liquid emulsion on just about any wall... or bed sheet

+1. There really is no answer. Except what your *personal* limits are. And that you'll have to discover yourself.

For me, I like big prints, and I'm not a big fan of graininess or softness in my prints. So I moved up in format to 5x4 film. This lets me make 125 x 100 cm prints fairly easily, still fairly sharp and fairly smooth. And a view camera gives me the control to let me make a negative that I want to enlarge to these levels.

My personal films of choice are TMY-2 (XTOL 1:3), 160PortraNC, and 400PortraNC. I find they enlarge well in that order. TMY-2 can easily take 12x enlargement (possibly more, but that's as far as I normally want to go). 160PortraNC wants a little less, say 10-11x max. And 400PortraNC wants even less, say around 8x or less.

My personal experience has been that it doesn't particularly matter what format you are using as long as you think in terms of the amount of enlargement you are giving the film.

My other personal experience is that exposing for big enlargements isn't as easy as it sounds. There's a fair amount of technique involved, and much of that isn't necessarily obvious. It takes practice and involves climbing some learning curves. The thing is that with enlargement, everything gets enlarged. Everything, from the rocks in the stream to the coke can you didn't see in the stream bed. What's negligible in a smaller print is a glaring error in a big print. That leaf in the upper left corner that's just a little out of focus in a small print is a huge smear in a big print. So like everything else, to get good you'll have to work at it. And as you work at it you'll answer your own question -- how big is big enough, and how big is too big?

nworth · Sep 17, 2009

I don't know what has actually been done, but I know of a setup that used to be in a advertising firm that was capable of making a 300X240 inch enlargement from 8X10 or 4X5, and comparable sizes from 2-1/4. It used a large, automatic, horizontal enlarger. I understand it was used to make murals and large display pieces. The largest standard paper size seems to be 41 inches wide, however. As a single piece, you would be limited to 41 inches by whatever the equipment would permit. For really big stuff you would make several exposures and patch the sheets together.

MattKing · Sep 17, 2009

If you have the technique, and the equipment, you can go very large.

One of the best enlargements I've ever seen was approximately 4x5 feet! The original negative was on disk film (most likely garden variety Kodak consumer film). It was shot in the 1970s. The enlargement was done by Kodak, and the photograph was a fun shot depicting a Kodak salesperson. The enlargement was prepared to honour that person who was retiring at age 65, just a few months short of his 50th anniversary as an employee.

It was displayed at the surprise retirement party that Kodak held for him. There were hundreds in attendance, including senior management. In essence, Kodak went all out on this one.

Matt

BetterSense · Sep 17, 2009

I enlarged a 35mm TriX negative to 11x14 once. The problem wasn't so much grain as dealing with mega-enlarged dust and scratches.

Fred De Van · Sep 17, 2009

There is no limit

I have made a life size print of a bus. I also made a larger than life panoramic print of a jungle scene in Guatemala which was applied to the walls of the exhibit space in a museum.The effect was that the entire exhibit was placed in a jungle clearing.

Kodak at one time regularly made enormous prints which they exhibited inside Grand Central Station. It was not uncommon for me to generate 8-10 foot prints (Color and B&W) for various projects and clients.

These were generally made with huge horizontal enlargers powered by arc lamps or big flash units. The limit on paper size was usually 40-60 inches and the prints were made by assembling segments of this width. It was too difficult to handle and process wider paper even if we could get it.

nickandre · Sep 17, 2009

Ektar 100 (and most color films btw) enlarges well to 11x14. The limit I'm up against is not the grain of the film but the sharpness of the lens. I'm going to try 16x20 this year, but after that I'll need a bigger darkroom.

I second the issue with all too common "world's largest dust particle."

Fred De Van · Sep 17, 2009

Size of the original image was usually unimportant. The bus original was 4x5. The jungle was 6x6. Most of the 10ft. prints were 35mm.

Beyond a certain level of enlargement, it becomes essential to make a intermediate negative for a bunch of reasons. Reciprocity, brightness, contrast, lenses, and the impossibility of manipulating a big or multi part print which is dependent on matching the parts. All this is much simpler if the corrections are done before the creation of the working (usually) 8x10 negative. The color prints were always originated on transparency film, and printed on "Type C" materials. An internegative was essential. Kodak and others made specific color and monochrome films for this application.

George Collier · Sep 17, 2009

16x20 is it for me in my darkroom, from 35, or 4x5, 16x16 from 120. I'm not sure that I need to go larger for any kind of gallery stuff. Although I always remember attending Richard Avedon's show in the early 80's, at the Corcoran in DC (IIRC), of the portraits of people across the country, a well known body of his work, new at the time. Great looking prints, at least 4 - 5ft on the short side, mounted to what looked like 1/4" aluminum plates. It was a good scale for the size of the room.
I also remember what I overheard someone remark in mock awe as he drifted from print to print, "Big is More...."

AgX · Sep 17, 2009

To some extend an academic endeavour, but still interesting reading:

http://www.gigabitfilm.de/download/thousandfold_linear.pdf

ic-racer · Sep 17, 2009

I suspect you are asking about individual's technique. I go up to 16x20 in all formats (Minox to 8x10). I use 16x20 trays with 2 liters chemicals. I would like to go up to 20x24 some day.

Sirius Glass · Sep 17, 2009

I am looking for limits and methods. For years I have been hearing things like one cannot make a 35mm print larger than 11"14". I never believed it. I have printed larger, so I am interested in what people have done and how they did it.

Steve

Mick Fagan · Sep 18, 2009

For my own personal use and in my own darkroom, the largest I can do and have done a 35mm neg to, is about 1.4 metres wide on the projected image, then a section of that is usually printed on 12x16" paper (Ilford RC).

Once I used some 24x30" paper (Kodak RC), but that was for a near life sized bust shot, of mother and child. The subsequent prints were mounted onto foam core, to this day they are still hanging in the family home.

I have to use a glass carrier for anything like that, otherwise there is not edge to edge grain sharpness. With the glass carrier I have good sharp grain right across the print.

In another life, the largest I have enlarged a 35mm colour slide was to a colour billboard size, using Kodak 6' wide by 100' EP2 colour paper. The prints were mounted to a sail cloth like fabric by using an upholsterers sewing machine.

These cloth was then plastic welded at the back and the cloth was also sewn over with another piece of cloth over the seams for strength.

To get this kind of enlargement we made an 8x10" internegative (Kodak), whacked that in a 10x10" horizontal enlarger, then enlarged away to our hearts content all night.

It was for an end of year do of a very large international business, the photographer shot their new CEO about ½ an hour after the AGM, motorcycle couriered the film to us, which was about lunch time.

We finished the job around 0700hrs the following morning and the billboard portrait of the new CEO beamed out in our largest (at the time) exhibition hall for a huge press conference.

I think about 20 people in total were involved, big job, big satisfaction, big pay cheque the following week.

Generally I find that I print 35mm to a maximum enlargement where the negative is spread to about 20x24" and I use a portion on 12x16" paper. Not that often, but sometimes.

Mick.

Thomas Bertilsson · Sep 18, 2009

(I'm following this thread with great interest, because I'm moving into a darkroom where I can let my enlarger head go much higher than it could before. I am VERY excited.)

EASmithV · Sep 18, 2009

Greatest enlargement possible, or greatest enlargment practical?

I Imagine that for the sheer size, you are limited only by the maximum possible length of your enlargment path by the size of your darkroom, and the power of your lamp.

For maximum decent quality enlargment, a lot of other things come into play, naturally. In addition to the good source material (High resoloution lens, fine grain film), you also need to remember that you need a high resoloution enlarger lens, big paper, the trays/sponges to develop such a large size, contrast filters as you tend lose contrast with size (personal observation), a bright enough light source, a good image source, and possibly a few more things.

Guillaume Zuili · Sep 18, 2009

+3
No limit except yours. Mural prints from Minox can be amazing and 4x5 can also be boring as hell.
It all depends on what you show, what you want to express and the meaning of it.
At the end a crap picture will never say anything. Small or big, with or without grain or dust.
Content is more important than resolution or grain etc...
In my sense (and my taste) large print need density, black and grain bring structure of the picture
and hold it. This brings an illusion of sharpness. But it's just me. There is no rule.
Now for the "soup", it's the same but you need a lot of space and water.
A lot !

Thomas Bertilsson · Sep 18, 2009

I own a 'small' print by Guillaume. It's 16x20...

trexx · Sep 18, 2009

I have made crops on my D5XL, with the head moved to the top of rail. This is one meter to the base board, using a 40mm lens. Magnification equal image distance divided by object distance or 1000/40 which is 25. So with out doing anything I can get 25x enlargements at the base board. With some films, like TechPan, these are completely presentable.

keithwms · Sep 18, 2009

Let me just expand briefly on my previous comment that there are no limits. When I say there are not even any aesthetic limits, I am (still, in spite of what others have said above) quite serious about that.

Case in point: suppose that I enlarge a 35mm neg to a 10 meter print. Somebody will say, geez I see the grain, you shouldn't've gone so big, you should've used 20x24 camera to go that big!!!! But then I could turn around and say, yes that is the whole point, I want the grain to be prominent because it exposes the limits of the medium and makes that a feature of how the image is seen.

So.... these aesthetic arguments can always be turned on their head. What is acceptable will always ultimately depend on what the artist wants to convey. Another case in point: I am right now working on a project involving deliberate pixelation... go figure!

How you say something will always depend on what you want to say. Therefore, if you really want complete freedom in what you say with your photography (and I assume that we all do), then you also need freedom from these limits such as how big you could/should go. You can enlarge 35mm to whatever, you can got nuts with your colours, you can do a large format macro series on cat's butts, you can do do whatever you want! Should you?... now that's another separate topic... and one that never reaches a definitive answer.

Phil · Sep 18, 2009

Why not ask Carl? See "10 Steps to Success in High Performance Photography" starting on page 2:

http://www.zeiss.com/C12567A8003B8B6F/EmbedTitelIntern/CLN04e/$File/CLN4.pdf

(there was a url link here which no longer exists)

ic-racer · Sep 18, 2009

Guillaume Zuili said:
Mural prints from Minox can be amazing...

Just wondered if you do big Minox prints yourself and which lens you use. I had been using the 30mm Rokkor-X CE but recently got a Rodenstock 25mm, but have not made any 16x20s yet with the new lens.

Greatest size enlargement ==> Optical methods only. No scanning

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