Photoshoot advice for Large Print (6' x 3')

[anandi]

Hello,
Strictly speaking this might be a Medium format question, but since I'm only a Digital/Rangefinder/SLR user I thought I'd ask for advice coming from this side of experience.

I have to do a photoshoot of a panoramic landscape for a 6'x3' tradeshow booth backdrop. After quickly realizing that even multiple digital images stiched together wouldn't give me the minimum 200dpi resolution for the final print, I looked to scanning a 35mm negative. Even with a 7200 dpi scanner, it's not enough (!), so I'm planning on renting a medium format camera with 60mm lens (37 mm equivalent in 35 mm land?). I'm renting a Hasselblad 500c and looking for advice / answers:

1. Any tips on metering? I'm planning to get a reading from my Canon G2 and A-1 SLR at the same film speed to get a reading and use on the MF camera - I figure the metering on either should be close to a lightmeter which I don't have

2. Any advice on using an MF coming from RFs and SLRs? I assume it's mount on tripod, compose, meter and go, but hey, what do I know?

3. I'm planning to bracket, just in case I screw up the exposure off the metering - 1 stop either side?

4. I'm planning to use transparency film, but should I also use negatives, just in case (to give me more exposure latitude)

Any other advice would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers,
-A

[Roman]

Don't forget to pull the darkslide before taking the picture!

Roman

[f/stopblues]

That's a massive enlargement! If you're only going as big as 6x6 then the quality will be compromised. The important thing here is going to end up being viewing distance though. You can get away with a lot if the viewing distance is, say, 10 feet. Remember, that 'Blad has a square format, so right off you'll have to crop from the negative. Something in a 6x7 format would give you a little more workable negative area, but not a ton. If you're going to rent, I'd go with a Pentax 67 SLR. You'll absolutely have to strap it to a tripod to avoid the massive mirror slap. It's basically a standard 35mm SLR on steroids and will have the most familiar controls and style to you. It also has the larger (and better oriented) 6x7 negative. If you want true panorama, the Fuji 617 has a 6x17 size negative.

Of course, the highest quality you're going to get for a project like this is with a large format field camera. I think the learning curve may be too great for a one-time project though.

My $.02 USD,
Chris

[f/stopblues]

Oh also, if you're not sure about what film to shoot, nervous about metering, etc, then just shoot them all! Film is cheap (relatively speaking), so bracket away especially on slides, shoot this brand, that brand, whatever. Sort through the results later and pick the best. It's better than not having anything to pick from.

[anandi]

Thanks for the suggestions, they're pretty helpful. By the way, is loading MF hard (wondering why the recommendations for different backs...).

Cheers,
-A

[Kin Lau]

Just a backdrop? Nothing anyone will need to press their noses into? Believe it or not, my dad (who have a auto-graphics shop... they put logo's & graphics on sides of trucks and such) printed up a 6 or 7 foot tall shot we had from Hawaii... shot on a plain old Canon 300D. Only 6 megapixels, and I didn't even shoot in RAW mode. From a few feet away, it looks great.

[skipc]

For just a Trade Show, Genuine Fractals—link below—would easily take your 7200 SP! scan to 3'x6' for less cost than renting the MF gear. There are several other even less expensive solutions than Fractals, including taking it up in 10% encrements in Photoshop with an Action like Fred Miranda's etc. Sounds like you already have the panoramic shot, if not you would be shooting your own equipment with slow film and a tripod ...skip

http://www.ononesoftware.com/

[sf]

I would have rented a 645 AF camera, personally. Depending on the distances in the landscape, you might be able to get razor sharp focus with a waist level finder - but I hope you got a Hassy with a prism finder. I find it hard to get decent focus with a waist level unless I can judge the distances accurately, I suppose with a landscape you should be OK with hyperfocal and infinity focusing. Or maybe the focusing screen is really nice - I have never had the pleasure of shooting with a Hasselblad, only the Mamiya RZ cameras. Be obsessive about your focusing though - for sure, every degree of accuracy will matter like crazy at 6' x 3'.

Use a spot meter and pay close attention to your zones. You will probably benefit from using a filter to compensate for the brightness of the sky (what are those called?). In my experience, nearly every landscape I have ever taken in any format could have seriously benefitted from one of those filters.

Don't worry about it too much as far as film though. If you have only one shot to shoot, and a whole roll of film (or a few), just bracket the heck out of it. Shoot in half stop increments, or even third stop increments. And you will be happiest with Velvia, surely. Especially if you want to avoid grain.

If you do any black and white, use Ilford Pan F - it is awesome - very fine grain. 50 ISO too.

Good luck

[sf]

It takes some practice if you want to load fast, but you will not be under pressure, I don't expect.

What is important is to be sure to wind the film to the correct point before shooting!

I have lost important shots for lack of winding properly. Make sure you understand the marks on the back of the film and wich ones apply to the Hasselblad - there is a place to wind to for most cameras, but some are special.

Be sure that you have the film on there good too, sure that the film is taught between the spindles and that it is flat against the backing.

[varjag]

Landscape, huge print.. all sounds like a job for large format. If you have no prior experience with it though using an MF camera is a safer bet.

As to resolution you could probably get away with less than 200dpi for a backdrop. Billboard ads are printed at resolutions as low as 15-20 dpi.

[Hektor]

100 pixels per inch is fine for a mural,

therefore the print has to contain 7200 pixels, along its width,

a scanner working at 4800 ppi will produce the required image from a 35mm slide.

But this is not the whole story.

It is in the nature of film that the fine detail recorded by the emulsion will stand an enlargement of about 20x from a really good neg. Which means a mural of about 20"x30" not 72"x36".

However, oldtimer practice will tell you that good 35mm slides can be projected, by a good projector, onto a good screen, at 72" wide and they look great.

Therefore, I think that if I had to do this job at minimum cost, I would shoot the original with 35mm velvia and a tripod, then project the slide and rephotgraph with a digital camera, and the get someone with a 36" wide printer to print the mural 72"x36"x100ppi.

Regards and good luck.

[oftheherd]

PP&I has discussed this many times, especially in the Digital Forum. One search brought up http://www.interpolatethis.com/reallife1.html which you might find interesting once you get past the bantering. You might find other interesting info with another search. My expectation is that if people aren't going to stick their noses in your backdrop, digital should do for you. Good luck whatever you choose to use.

[RObert Budding]

Better take some DSLR shots, too. It never hurts to have options.

Robert

[djon]

I've seen amazingly beautiful 12' tall panels of aerial landscape photos, shot with Mamiya 7, scanned, interpolated (maybe Genuine Fractals).

These panels visually demanded that viewers look very closely...nose distance.... they stay beautiful and sharp-looking because.instead of fuzzy grain you see what looks like Islamic tile work.

Don't know your photo situation, but Pentax 6X7 is a great idea...and it's NOT TRUE that mirror slap is an issue, assuming you're shooting at a 250th or so with a normal lens, or using a strobe. 6X7 is a lot bigger than 6X6 when you crop it to the size you're describing...like 2X.

[Kin Lau]

In case you want the _ultimate_... www.gigapxl.org

21 ft long panorama's that you can press your nose up against to examine the detail.... oh yes, it's a rangefinder too.

[XAos]

Rent? Feel the pull of the dark slide. People are just about throwing away RB67's these days. You know you want one.

[anandi]

Hello all,
I wanted to thank all of you for the great ideas and advice and give you a quick follow up. Today was the photoshoot day (supposed to be the only day, but read on) and I picked up a Hasselblad 500c from the only local store that rents them. I decided to shoot one roll of Fuji Provia 100 for the MF on the advice of the guy I was renting from and also take along two SLRs with Fuji Velvia 50 and 100 (the 50 I will end up pushing to 100 tomorrow to have all cameras metering the same). The Hassy was outfitted with a 60 mm lens (~37mm in 35mm format?) which wasn't quite as wide as I wanted. I had a 28mm lens on my Canon A-1 that was about right. Unfortunately the only RFs that I had that were wide enough were my Oly XA and a Minox 35GL, but I couldn't really effectively bracket those and they didn't seem 'serious' enough (although I suspect either would be plenty sharp and contrasty). I forgot my digicam at home, though (doh!).

I had two tripods and had a plan - take shots with an SLR for composition and metering, transfer the metering to the Hassy and take a 1/2 stop underexposure for each shot I like the composition on.

Issue #1, I got up into the hills (Gatineau near Ottawa, FYI) late with the sun shining into the shot. It wasn't the saturated look I was going for. Also the weather, although sunny, did not cooperate with the puffy clouds I had envisioned for the shoot. The result is that I will pop up to the hills to try to get morning light at the right angle, and hope that the rain holds out.

I really liked the feel of the MF camera, sure the viewfinder wasn't bright, but the heaviness, the few shots I had trying to make count and mechanics felt very different and pleasant.

Issue #2. Since I was going back and forth between two cameras, and not concentrating only on one thing, I accidentally left the SLR in at a manual shutter setting for about 4 shots that will be completely overexposed. I went and re-shot those after I realized. I think I metered all the Hassy shots in the right ballpark. I figure a 1/2 stop underexposure will give me lots of latitude after getting into photoshop for the final backdrop composition.

So I shot 1/2 my MF film and will finish the shoot tomorrow, then get all the slide film processed. My 35mm slide film is a backup, and tomorrow I'll leave the A-1 at home, bring the T-70 and my Canon G2 to have a digital backup.

Cheers,
-A

[anandi]

Oh yeah, forgot to share the realizations I got from your great responses from the thread and this whole exercise so far:

1. I may not need 200 dpi for the final print, so might be able to get away with a 35mm scan (hence the SLR backup).

2. The whole interpolation thing didn't occur to me at all, since I never scale up digitial imagery in photoshop, just do the opposite. Playing around with bicubic smooth interpolation in Photoshop CS I got reasonable results with 1.5x scaling so again, with 35mm might be a good backup if the MF tanks

3. MF isn't quite as scary as I thought it would be. Thanks for the reminder about the darkslide! Very cool to be able to change filmpacks in midshoot (not that I did).

4. Digicams / DSLRs have a place, but not seemingly when you want maximum resolution, and want to really blow up big. I'll still do a photostich of multiple images, but only as a 2nd backup.

5. I need a high-quality interchangeable RF system with TTL metering and superb but not insanely expensive lenses. I have recently rediscovered my Canon FD lenses and the system - as manual as you want them to be for metering, manual focus, really good and inexpensive lenses available now, but they're not zeiss optics. I haven't got the MF bug (yet). But if I ever see a cheap-ish starter kit for sale, I'd seriously consider picking one up to add to my bag of tricks.

[Roman]

Originally Posted by anandi

5. I need a high-quality interchangeable RF system with TTL metering and superb but not insanely expensive lenses. I have recently rediscovered my Canon FD lenses and the system - as manual as you want them to be for metering, manual focus, really good and inexpensive lenses available now, but they're not zeiss optics. I haven't got the MF bug (yet). But if I ever see a cheap-ish starter kit for sale, I'd seriously consider picking one up to add to my bag of tricks.

Sounds like you need a Voigtländer Bessa RF system - TTL-metering, high-quality lenses with quite a few (super-)wideangle options, all at reasonable prices.

In MF, your choice of RFs is limited to Mamiya 6 an7, Bronica 645, and the old Fuji 670 an 690 models - all of which are supposed to be excellent, but none inexpensive, unfortunately...

As for MF-SLR starter-kits, now is the time to get them, prices are at an all-time low, quite a few good systems available from Mamiya, Bronica and Pentax.

Roman

[Kin Lau]

Originally Posted by anandi

4. Digicams / DSLRs have a place, but not seemingly when you want maximum resolution, and want to really blow up big. I'll still do a photostich of multiple images, but only as a 2nd backup.

5. I need a high-quality interchangeable RF system with TTL metering and superb but not insanely expensive lenses. I have recently rediscovered my Canon FD lenses and the system - as manual as you want them to be for metering, manual focus, really good and inexpensive lenses available now, but they're not zeiss optics. I haven't got the MF bug (yet). But if I ever see a cheap-ish starter kit for sale, I'd seriously consider picking one up to add to my bag of tricks.

#4... dslr != dslr. Huge world of difference there. Not all pixels are made equal

#5. Bessar R. Check out the Cameraquest Bessa R + 35/2.5 package. Make sure to use the link from this site so that Jorge gets the referral.

If you can wait another week or 2, the colour of the Gatineau hills should be incredible. The view from the Champlain lookout should breathtaking. Another very nice spot, would be on Meech Lake. Follow the path from the parking before the beach, to the bridge at one end of Meech. It's about a 10min hike, but _very_ good for sunset shots.

[anandi]

Results of photoshoot:

I thought I'd close the loop for anyone interested.
The MF/ Hasselblad pictures came out really well. I took the metering from both my Canon A-1 and T-70 (average and spot-ish metering respectively) and used the reading for the Hassy as I figured it would be a reasonable lightmeter substitute. I shot with Fuji Provia on the Hassy and Velvia on the A-1 both at 100 ASA. The MF shots were generally what I was expecting, with me erring on the slightly underexposed side since the high res scanning can recover from it easier than overblown highlights.

Strangely, almost all the A-1 shots were *way* underexposed. The landscape shots were a little bit into the sun, but both the MF and A-1 were taken from the same tripod and at the same time. In other shots on the A-1 roll things were more or less okay. The MF shoot was an interesting experience - every shot counted and I like the mechanical, deliberate feel of the gear. It's not portable, but the manual everything really forced me to think. I appreciate the advice on the forum. I've picked a shot that's going to be scanned to create a 50MB or so file.

Cheers,
-A