Printing photographs in large formats

I like taking photos and would like to make some large scale print outs of them and get them framed to hang up in my apartment.

My question is, how does one accomplish this? I'm looking to print something the size of maybe a movie poster, but I know from my limited graphic design experience that when printing pictures they need to be uncompressed with a high dpi (like 300). But, the camera I have now only takes jpegs, which are compressed and I'm sure would look crappy when printed.

Should I just get a very high megapixel camera? Do they make cameras that save in TIFF or some other UNcompressed picture format?

A high megapixel camera would be your best bet - if you need to, you can shoot in RAW format, which is completely untouched by inbuilt camera software, so no compression, no white balance, nothing like that. Personally, I shoot in jpeg format with a 10.1MP camera (longest side is 3888 pixels) and that prints large quite well as long as it's a decent quality exposure. Make sure you keep the ISO around 400...

Leukeh said:

A high megapixel camera would be your best bet - if you need to, you can shoot in RAW format, which is completely untouched by inbuilt camera software, so no compression, no white balance, nothing like that. Personally, I shoot in jpeg format with a 10.1MP camera (longest side is 3888 pixels) and that prints large quite well as long as it's a decent quality exposure. Make sure you keep the ISO around 400...

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oo that's good to know that digital cameras can shoot in an uncompressed format. I guess I just really need to update my camera then

Alternativey buy the Genuine Fractals plug in for Photoshop which will upscale your photos to poster size with no or little visible loss in quality.

Del said:

Alternativey buy the Genuine Fractals plug in for Photoshop which will upscale your photos to poster size with no or little visible loss in quality.

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Oh wow... never knew about this. That's incredible! Will go looking for that now...

Or read this:

http://dgrin.smugmug.com/gallery/2996921

What does ISO stand for?

scottwparker said:

What does ISO stand for?

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No idea what ISO actually stands for but you'll see numbers like 100, 200, 400, 800, 1600 on your camera. It's basically how light-sensitive the light sensor is. You can get different types of film that are more sensitive to light - means you can have faster shutter speeds and smaller apertures and still get the same result. On a digital camera, your ISO is essentially the same as using different ratings of film. An ISO rating of 100 is not very sensitive, 1600 is very sensitive. Disadvantage of using a high ISO is that the image turns out quite grainy. An ISO rating of 400 is pretty much standard so I try not to go higher where possible.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong... but I don't think I am.

Depends on the camera Leukeh, I can go up to ISO 800 before I see noticeable noise, but it is still very usable. 1600 is pretty noisy though.

What printer would you use for this? can anyone recommend one?!

I have seen some pretty nice big posters taken with 5mp cameras, i think 6mp or 8mp will be enough for you.

Leukeh said:

A high megapixel camera would be your best bet - if you need to, you can shoot in RAW format, which is completely untouched by inbuilt camera software, so no compression, no white balance, nothing like that. Personally, I shoot in jpeg format with a 10.1MP camera (longest side is 3888 pixels) and that prints large quite well as long as it's a decent quality exposure. Make sure you keep the ISO around 400...

Click to expand...

Just remember that most point and shoots do not have a RAW mode, you would have to get a Digital SLR. They will let you choose to shoot in RAW or JPEG or you can even choose to do both at the same time, personaly i use a canon rebel xt and a 30D.

Have a look at SizeFixer from Fixer labs. From the results I've seen, it's really good.
It will also print up to A0 paper size

As for ISO = it stands for International Standardization Organisation. The full explaination is HERE which tells you how they calculate the film speeds and also has the old ASA/DIN/GOST (Russian) equivalents. Makes me feel really old reading it.