> To which I reply, once again, balderdash. But it's true. If you're
> going to print a book the publisher will demand this 300 ppi "photo
> quality".
I've see a 30x40 print from a 6mp camera, and it was on the high side of
acceptable. At a causal look, it was just fine, but the lack of fine detail
made it something that I wouldn't want to live with. That doesn't translate
into printed material.
As someone that shoots and prepares things for offset printing, let me
assure you that even the least sophisticated viewer will know something
printed at low resolution. The lowest acceptable is 150ppi, and that gives
results roughly that of newspaper printing of some years ago (newspaper
reproduction has improved a lot in the last 15 or so years). For books and
magazines, 300 is in fact nor only a defacto standard slavishly held to, but
is also the lowest resolution that will print results acceptable to the
general public. LensWork, for example, is printed at either 400 or 450, and
a duotone, I think.
I'm not printing books and I don't care. I'm also not doing
> architectural photography where I'd like all the details to be sharp as
> a tack. In my photo world a 3MP image can make a beautiful 24x36
> portrait... designed, of course, to be viewed from several feet away and
> not the 25cm/10" reading distance for a typical book or magazine.
You've hit on something. There are people posting here that lower
resolutions are always fine. What they are really saying is, I shoot
portraits and weddings, or distant landscapes perhaps, and that's all I
need.
For others, higher resolutions do produce better results, architectural,
commerical and industrial, and other detail oriented photography are
examples. I would suggest that landscapes look better with more fine detail
in trees and such.
But we've all had these arguments over film; tripod or not, slow film or
fast, Zeiss or Leica, etc. Digital only makes it easier to quantify.
Bill Pearce
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