Plexi face mounting of high resolution landscapes

[MetroRuss]

Hello all,

I was in the mall the other day and was waiting for my wife. I walked into a framed art store and was very drawn to this piece that POPPED out at me. It was a 60'x24" plexiface print. I have never heard of this term before and had never thought about printing out my own photographs. But now I am thinking about it. Thinking to give some away as gifts to loyal clients, family gifts etc.

My question is, what mega pixel sensor must I have in order to shoot at an image resolution that is high enough to print out at 5'x2' ?

I hope I don't have to purchase a new 36 mp camera just to do this so I was wondering about taking some gigapan shots. Thoughts? Would these provide a high enough pixel count so the photos do not become pixelated upon magnification.

For gigapans I have been using a nodal ninja with an RD16 head that pans in 3.75 degree increments.

Thanks for any feedback you can contribute!

[pnodrog]

At a guess 60x300 = 18,000 pixels wide. and 24x300 gives 7200 pixels high. If you drop to 200 DPI(PPI) effective (not printer resolution) you will get away with a single row portrait (camera vertical) pan using a minimum of 6 shots from a 24 mp camera. With correct noise reduction and sharpening it is surprising how much enlargement is acceptable.

The expected viewing distance from the print can have a significant impact on the actual pixels needed. For instance below is a photo of a sign that is about 13 feet by 5 feet and was a single frame cropped to 5934 pixels wide. Viewing from 3 feet it looks a bit soft but not pixelated. Viewing from 12 feet and it looks pretty good.

[chauncey]

what mega pixel sensor must I have in order to shoot at an image resolution that is high enough to print out at 5'x2'

It's less about sensor MP size then it is shooting technique and PP skills...take a plethora of
images with sufficient overlap and merge them.
The limiting factor is...can your computer handle the huge file sizes?

[Manfred M]

The process seems to be nothing more than using an adhesive to bond an image to a sheet of acrylic.

Regardless of any technical issues, remember that acrylic is a soft plastic that scratches quite easily, is a very good "dust magnet" and will yellow over time when exposed to sunlight.

[Geoff F]

I have a friend who specialises in extra large panoramic prints on a variety of materials.

He shoots multiple images with a reasonably large lens (say around 100 mm) then stitches the sections together in the normal panoramic image production method. It does take a bit of computer power though.

One alternative method he does is to print onto plastic and display with a light behind the print. Subject to normal safety concerns about heat etc.

Another simple option he uses is to mount the print on board then cover with a protective plastic film.

[loosecanon]

all depends where the print will be displayed.
If its going to be looked at from say one metre is anyone going to notice a lower resolution. OK increase the pixels and let the software interpolate the image to get to your 12,000 or 18,000 pixel wide print. Then use good sharpening software to put some edge back, then print away.
Experiment on a cropped image and see the sort of results you get and see if they are good enough.
In the days of 6MP sensors we were happy to print A3, now with four times that some are still worried about the sharpness of an A3 image. If 6MP was good enough, then 24MP should cover an A1 sheet, a width of 840mm.

[MetroRuss]

Thank you all for your feedback.
I have been reading up on gigapixel photos, where one takes a handful, dozens, hundreds or thousands of photos and uses ICE to merge/stitch them. Seems like the way to go for printing. However I noticed that alot of these wide panorama shots seem to be warped and not rectilinear.

[chauncey]

I'm not familiar with ICE, but...anyone that has done PS's photomerging understands what a
PITA it can be with it have 6 different methods of merging images. Oftentimes it is necessary
to break your series into smaller segments then go back and merge those segments.