Food Photography

[robstewart1]

I'd welcome some advice on the following:
I want to take some food photographs and then print them at upto 1500 x 750mm. Is there an ideal size (MB) to aim for to enable the shot to be blown up this big?
Any help gratefully received!
Rob.

[GeoffWessex]

Notwithstanding the basic point of how far the viewer is going to be standing from the print, 1.5m x .75m could be a little tricky if you use the full pixel count from a reasonable quality camera. (Most professional food photographers would be using a Full Frame camera or even a 40Mp + Hasselblad). But something like a 12Mp camera - more or less 'entry level' - (and giving about 16Mb file size) would only give you about 500mm x 330mm at what would be the lowest reasonable ppi/dpi of 200.

On the other hand, sending a file of this size (around 16Mb) to a commercial printer will still give a reasonable result.... but then you'll see why professionals use something like a Full Frame or bigger sensor.

[Cutter]

Originally Posted by robstewart1

I'd welcome some advice on the following:
I want to take some food photographs and then print them at upto 1500 x 750mm. Is there an ideal size (MB) to aim for to enable the shot to be blown up this big?
Any help gratefully received!
Rob.

Fill the frame so all your photo is used , dont crop, increase your dpi no less than 300 and see what you think, it will be a question of whether you are happy with the results.
If I might say: contact Denise ( stormstrong) on this site she has been in printing for a long time she could give you all your answers

[robstewart1]

Thank you both very much - this was exactly what I needed to know and really helpful.

Rob.

[GeoffWessex]

We have a slight conflict there, Mark..... I think you can usually get away with 200dpi ..... but even this, with a fairly standard 12Mp camera, will only give you half a metre print length, and Rob wants 1.5 metres. The 300dpi you recommend (and I'd agree with in most cases) would only give about a third of a metre length. Hence for that size of print I'd say that you need treble the pixels - a top of the range Full Frame at least.

But of course it's also down to the viewer to print distance - a print that's 1.5 metres wide or high will require the viewer to stand well back, so you can get away with 200dpi.