How big can one print MF?

[hankchinaski]

Given good color negatives (Kodak Gold, medium format 6x6, shot with Schneider glass, no scratches/dust etc), how big can one print them with pleasing results? Is 3ft by 3ft (1 meter x 1 meter) reasonable? Would the same considerations apply to black and white (mostly PANF, same glass)?

 

[xkaes]

I've made four foot prints from 16mm film that I found "pleasing".

 

[Don_ih]

It depends on how the camera was used, also. A lens that's set to its "preferred" aperture, a higher shutter speed, a tripod - all those things help make a negative appropriate for large enlargements. Kodak Gold may not be the best choice for something really huge.

Ilford claims a 35mm PanF+ negative can be enlarged to mural size.

 

[hankchinaski]

It depends on how the camera was used, also. A lens that's set to its "preferred" aperture, a higher shutter speed, a tripod - all those things help make a negative appropriate for large enlargements. Kodak Gold may not be the best choice for something really huge.

Ilford claims a 35mm PanF+ negative can be enlarged to mural size.

Thanks. These conditions are mostly met:

- higher shutter speed or tripod
- aperture mostly kept in the middle (5.6 -> 8) or closed to 16 for very sunny conditions
- some gold, some ektar, some fuji 400h

 

[Don_ih]

Making large enlargements may show off the limitations of your other equipment, though, such as your enlarger setup, your lens, or how the negatives are scanned (if you go the printer route).

 

[runswithsizzers]

When trying to talk about print quality, I believe it is important to define the viewing distance. Generally, very large prints are viewed from farther away than small prints. A large print which looks great from a reasonable distance may not look so great when viewed up close, so the definition of "pleasing results" very much depends on the viewing distance.

 

[hankchinaski]

Making large enlargements may show off the limitations of your other equipment, though, such as your enlarger setup, your lens, or how the negatives are scanned (if you go the printer route).

I would get it done since I cannot possibly handle that size of printing.

 

[Don_ih]

When trying to talk about print quality, I believe it is important to define the viewing distance. Generally, very large prints are viewed from farther away than small prints. A large print which looks great from a reasonable distance may not look so great when viewed up close, so the definition of "pleasing results" very much depends on the viewing distance.

Ah, yes, but @DREW WILEY would say you're a hack unless people can press grease your prints with their noses looking at all the minute detail....

 

[hankchinaski]

It really comes down to how YOU define "pleasing results".

Somebody buys the print
It should retain the advantage that MF has got with respect to smaller formats.

 

[warden]

Somebody buys the print
It should retain the advantage that MF has got with respect to smaller formats.

MF prints at the size you're after will offer advantages in overall quality compared to similar sized prints from 35mm negatives.

Work with a local printer that will also scan your negs for you if possible. Do some tests with them. You may find the printer will offer a price break for test prints as it will take more than one try to get the print settings and paper selections right. There is really no substitute for you being in the room while the test prints are being made and giving realtime feedback to the printer.

(I'm assuming scanning and inkjet is what we're talking about rather than darkroom.)

 

[hankchinaski]

MF prints at the size you're after will offer advantages in overall quality compared to similar sized prints from 35mm negatives.

Work with a local printer that will also scan your negs for you if possible. Do some tests with them. You may find the printer will offer a price break for test prints as it will take more than one try to get the print settings and paper selections right. There is really no substitute for you being in the room while the test prints are being made and giving realtime feedback to the printer.

(I'm assuming scanning and inkjet is what we're talking about rather than darkroom.)

You are assuming correctly.
It's hard to find darkrooms that will print that large these days.

 

[mshchem]

Any large retail prints these days are going to be produced with digital voodoo. Use a TRIPOD and the sky is the limit. I don't care for huge prints. So not a problem for me

 

[loccdor]

At flatbed scanner resolutions, with a very sharp 6x6 lens and fine grained film (Fuji Acros 100) I've been able to make pleasing 2 foot prints.

By doubling the dpi by switching to DSLR scanning & stitching, or just using a good old fashioned dark room enlarger, 4 foot prints should be possible.

I don't know what kind of resolution Kodak Gold 200 specifically achieves, but there are definitely options that achieve more. Whether the grain bothers you is down to personal preference. If you want fine grain color with high resolution, you may want to consider Fuji slide films.

 

[Marcelo Paniagua]

Making large enlargements may show off the limitations of your other equipment, though, such as your enlarger setup, your lens, or how the negatives are scanned (if you go the printer route).

I find this to be true. For example, is the table that the enlarger sit is a little wooby, it wont impact when I enlarge a 5x7 from a 35mm I have no problem, but I do when I enlarge from a 120 and do a, let say 16x20.


By the way, the largest I've enlarged is 16x20 from a 120 negative (I think it was Plus X or FP4). Good grain and looked great.

 

[koraks]

Is 3ft by 3ft (1 meter x 1 meter) reasonable?

That's pushing it if the print will be viewed from up close, but great if it's going to be viewed from across a large room.
In other words - nobody will be able to answer this question unless it's made a little clearer what the expectations are.

You could approximate/guesstimate what it'll look like by taking an image of known resolution, display it at a certain size on your computer monitor and then viewing it at various magnifications to mimic different print sizes. While this is a crude approximation only, it'll give a bit of an impression of what the print may end up looking like.

The quality of the scan will be a significant factor at the kind of magnification you mention. A flatbed scan will be very, very marginal indeed.

 

[grain elevator]

It's a specific look but IMHO, a large color print can look great even if the sharpness doesn't quite hold up, but the color is good and bold and the dye clouds are resolved reasonably well so the eye has detail to hold on to. So I'd get them scanned in a resolution that results in at least 300 dpi in the print and printed to whatever size you want.

 

[warden]

The quality of the scan will be a significant factor at the kind of magnification you mention. A flatbed scan will be very, very marginal indeed.

I think scanning is likely to be the weakest link in the chain. We're talking about an 18X enlargement to get to a 1 meter print. I've used a flatbed to print up to 16" with MF and that looked good but that's only about 7X. The OP will need a very high quality scan indeed.

 

[jeffreyg]

Five years ago I had a gallery exhibition where several images were professionally enlarged to 5ft and one to 6ft. I assume that large photographs are intended to be displayed on a wall. The viewer will usually stand back far enough to see the entire picture. The ones I referred to were quite sharp but I never did a minute inspection.

 

[wiltw]

A lot of folks have considered 16x enlargement to be the limit of enlarging 135 format, due to apparent grain...applying that same magnification, that would create an image 35" x 35" from 6x6 format.

 

[Pieter12]

It all depends on your expectations. Do you want razor-sharp, detailed prints? Your negatives had better be razor sharp and detailed and drum scanned. I have seen beautiful, 6 ft tall enlargements from pushed Tri-X that worked because they were about the emotion of the shot, not the minute details. Also, collaborate with your printer to get the best results. It may take a couple of rounds.

 

[jeffreyg]

The prints I referred to above were from PS files that were scanned Ilford Delta 400 120 negatives that I scanned at 2400ppi (so called) with SilverFast Studio8 on an Epson 850. The printer had equipment capable of billboard size printing. He had large Canon printers that he used only for printing exhibition prints. What ever he did did not show noticeable enlarged grain and the prints were sharp enough for the curator to accept for his gallery.

 

[MattKing]

Eighteen Feet by Sixty feet, if you are particularly careful, and if you can find someone willing to re-awaken the Kodak Colorama experience - which included results from 35mm!
https://www.montanusphotography.com/neil_montanus_bio/coloramas.htm
I once saw a 3 foot by 4 foot enlargement that was made from a Kodak disc negative and was exceptionally good. That was, of course, a special one-off project employed to honour a very special Kodak Canada employee, on the occasion of his retirement at age 65, after just under 50 years of service. The wizards at Rochester apparently applied every special tool they had for that one!

 

[DREW WILEY]

Heck - let me repeat once again. You can make any shot as big as you want. One of the most negatively influential images in history was the partial frame of a rather poor 35mm exposure routinely enlarged as much as forty FEET across - the Marlboro Man billboards. That size enlargement was perfectly appropriate for a "normal viewing distance" of a hundred yards away by a vehicle speeding 70 mph down the freeway in the haze of their own cigarette smoke.

But if you want a reasonably crisp enlargement at say, book reading distance, 8X is about the limit, and quite a bit less for my own nose-up with reading glasses expectations. For example, I never print a 6x7 cm image beyond 20X24 inch print size, even under the best of circumstances; rarely more than 16X20 when black and white rather than color film is involved. And I have exceptionally precise printing equipment capable of higher detail resolution than anything inkjet.

Yet that doesn't make me discount what others are doing with a different kind of visual strategy in mind, or for quite different display purposes. What works, works. But I don't think any mere generic answer is worthwhile in this respect; no one shoe size fits every person either.

But the standards of "Curators"nowadays?? (barff - big for big's sake is all they seem to think about - megabarf).

 

[cliveh]

If you print through digital methods you could use Interpolation. This is a method used to scale prints without losing quality.

 

[DREW WILEY]

With optical printing you scale things up with minimal color saturation loss using intermediate sized duplicates or internegatives; for example, enlarging 35mm or 120 MF frames onto the appropriate 4x5 or 8x10 sheet film, and then further enlarging that. But none of these methods can represent detail not there to begin with in a small original. So it all depends on what you mean by "quality".