On my little point and shoot, I try to maximize the quality of the pictures by having them set so I can thake the smallest amount of pictures on the memory card...

That gives me an average of 2.35 Mb per picture...

Would this be good enough to make a large print of my pictures?

What size do you pros make your photos at with your godly gear that make me drool all the time?

This post was edited by MotherOfTwo on May 26 2009 03:03pm

What're the pixel dimensions of the photos?

What do you consider a large print?

When you talk about printing you have to think in terms of DPI (display pixels per inch) and what distance the photo will be viewed at, most photographic prints should be 300 DPI (the standard which comes out of your camera) to be seen in great detail from very close up, but 150 DPI is more than acceptable.

There are other things to consider as well, there's no point in printing at large sizes if your shots have lots of noise, and if the lens isn't too sharp, as any flaws will just be made more visible.

I can tell you though that my 6MP DSLR can print 10 inches by 7 at 300 DPI, and 20 inches by 14 at 150 DPI.

Also, the method of print is quite important, C-types and Lightjet's use proper photographic paper that's developed in the same manner as you would from film, while inkjet (giclee's just a posh name for inkjet) just comes out of a printer and quite often the inks give the image a weird contrast (as some colours are more shiny than others) when viewed at certain angles.

Ehm. Well not that I'm exactly a pro or anything, but I keep all my photos in about 10-15mb size x'D I also keep very few shots as you can imagine they fill up your hard-drive quite fast I Think of it as quality > quantity, but that's just me. I've never printed any of my shots so I couldn't help you with that :x I'm pretty sure most of mine could print pretty damn huge though xD Given the right equipment.

Mine hover around 2.15mb with 3072x2304 pictures, but that's only a 7.1mp camera.My new camera is 10.2mp and so I don't know what this one will be like.

As for printing, you would probably want something like 8-10mp at least if you are going to be printing 30x20's and around that size.

This post was edited by kratos on May 26 2009 03:03pm

Ok... I'm not sure understand everything that was said...

I think the size of the pictures is 3072 x 2374..
It seems to be the largest setting on my camera...

I own a 7.1 mp Canon PowerShot....
Is it the 7,1 mp that makes it that I can't take bigger or higher quality pictures?
Or am I just wrong in my setting?

And how large a piture could I get to keep a fine quality print?

@Veilside .... I have no clue what you mean by DPI...
Where do I find out that info about my pictures?

This post was edited by MotherOfTwo on May 26 2009 03:12pm

You should be able to see info like that if you right click on it and check the settings, also, you can see the DPI when you open it in Photoshop.

I don't have photoshop.....

I'm limited to Paint (and I don't know how to use 90% of it) ..

And regarding noise..
Would you consider that the pictures in this topic are low enough in noise or stil too much?
http://forums.d2jsp.org/index.php?showtopic=30632799&f=265

Is there a math equation I could do to find out the dpi with the size of the picture?

A 7.1 mp will take photos with about 7.1 * 1024 * 1024 pixels.
The quality of your shots is not related to the number of mp, rather it is things like camera sensor and lenses.
You can still have a camera with a lot of pixels but crappy image quality.

DPI means Dots Per Inch (basically pixels per inch).
There is no correlation between the number of pixels in a shot and the print size.
It's the DPI that matters, because that determines how many pixels will be put into an inch.
The higher the DPI, the smaller the image, but higher the quality.

I think that's how it works, anyway. Anyone, feel free to correct me.

You can print as big as you want. However if your camera is 7.1mp the quality will rapidly decrease after you try printing larger than A3

Just dont worry about DPI or PPI

it really depends. My camera is 10.2 mp and I'm able to print at 8x10... well, that's the nicest size at 300 dpi. And i believe that takes about 14mb (I'm really just guessing, I've never checked it) And i almost always shoot in raw.

I'd say you could squeeze a 8x10 out of 7mp. But what i would do if i were you... Test it, that is if you have a printer at home. And if you are going to print a lot... Invest in a good printer.

DPI= Dots per inch... i think... Basically it's how many , we'll say ink, dots are in one inch. The more dots, The clearer the image is capable of being. 300 is the average amount for normal printing of anything.

Hope I helped...