1D3 how much can you crop....

redmonkee

redmonkee

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PHILIP
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...and still print a good quality 18x12 print?

Take the following example.

I shoot Raw.

I'm shooting Cricket and get a really good shot of the Batsman. Trouble is the shot is taken in Landscape orientation and there is a lot of empty space to the left of the batter. However I'd like to fill the whole frame with just the batter. So If I were to crop the file from top to bottom using the original aspect ratio thus eliminating the empty space to the left, would I be able to make a decent print from this.

Hope this makes sense.

I've heard loads of people say you can crop loads with the 1D3 and whilst this is true I just wanted to get an idea how far this can be taken when selling prints from those cropped files. :thinking:

Cheers
 
I've done 18x12 prints nicely on a quarter of the frame from my 1diii. I had a very nice magazine cover of a shot that was probably 1/10th of a frame and it still looked excellent with plenty of detail. Just be careful with the noise reduction and sharpening - lightroom 3 is much better than v2 for this.

The 1div is much better for cropping of course so best you get one of those asap :D
 
If you crop 75% of the original image away, leaving 25% (I'm good at sums me) then on a 10mp camera like the 1D3 that results in a 2.5mp picture.

Is that right or have I over simplified it?
 
Got a rather dusty monitor and read the thread title as "IBS how much can you cr(different vowel!)p".

Must dust...
 
Got to say it depends on the quality of lens IMHO.. One of the advantages of going from sigma to canon lens was i can crop more and retain quality on deeper crops.
 
I don't print, but there is a school of thought that says that 6 megapixels is all you ever need for printing. Since the 1D3 has very nice pixel quality then I'm sure 6 megapixels of image from a 1D3 would look a lot better than 6 megapixels of image from most other cameras. The reason for the 6 megapixel argument is that the larger you print the further back you should stand in order to admire the work and these things scale proportionally - if you double the height and width then you need to double the viewing distance. As you increase the viewing didtance the eye can resolve less and less detail so you don't actually need to keep adding more.

As to your crop, if I understand what you have said correctly, you would be left with about 4.5 megapixels, which on the face of it might be a bit low. If we look at the pixel dimensions then your image would be 2592x1728 pixels after cropping. If you wanted to make a print of 18x12 from that cropped image you would be printing at 2592/18 = 144 pixels per inch. That does sound a bit on the low side for viewing close up, but might be OK for viewing from a couple of feet away, which is about the distance from which you should view an 18x12 print.
 
KIPAX said:
:)


I won a comp at a camera club with an A3 print taken wiht a 2mp camera (olympus c2100uz) and slight crop.
Click to expand...

Yeah, you got me. Experience trumps theory every time. That's why I thought I'd best come clean and confess right up front. :)
 
guys this is really interesting, all the different theories :thinking:

Well I cropped an image like I said in my OP and exported it out of Lightroom upscaling it to 18x12"

When I viewed it in Adobe PS CS3 at actual pixels it didn't look too great. Should I be best viewing it at print size instead.

I should add the image I cropped was a high quality image taken with the Canon 300 2.8 + 1.4x TC
 
foxy loxy has an 18x12 from a really tight crop on a 1d3 on his wall, if its sharp and not too grainy you can upscale loads :D
 
redmonkee said:
guys this is really interesting, all the different theories :thinking:

Well I cropped an image like I said in my OP and exported it out of Lightroom upscaling it to 18x12"
Click to expand...
To be true a image has no size only pixels when you say you up sized it to 18x12 how did you do this did you set the image to 18x12 at 300DPI? with out seeing what your crop image size was ie in pixels its hard to advise you.
 
Interesting thread because I do a lot of aviation photography and have to crop quite a bit sometimes.

I think this is where the 7D has quite an advantage over the 1D3 with it's 18mp. Generally the 1D3 is slightly better image quality but after a big crop I thinkg the 7D images tend to look a little better imo. That's just my opinion though.
As Tobers said above it's a perfect reason to get a 1DmkIV. Best of both worlds with that camera.
 
With regards to your original question, you'll be fine taking a portrait crop from a landscape shot. I've had a picture printed at 18x12 that was about 1500x1000 pixels after cropping and it's perfectly acceptable quality wise.

If your worried about major crops then as Pete mentions you can use photoshop plugins such as genuine fractals to upscale the image before printing and these make a much better job of it than photoshops resize function. I still have genuine fractals on my laptop from when I worked at a print company so I decided to do a quick test (remember these are on the inferior sensor of a 30D):

Here's the original shot;
4712644496_b1a2878792.jpg


A 100% crop of the original;
100crop.jpg


Viewed at 1000%;
1000crop.jpg



up-ressed to 1000% in genuine fractals (11000 pixels along the long edge :eek:)
1000crop-genuinefractals.jpg


This is obviously an extreme example but It works very well as you can see.
 
tdodd said:
The 6 megapixel theory - http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/mpmyth.htm

I'm sure more references will be found with this search - http://www.google.co.uk/#hl=en&source=hp&q=six+megapixels+enough+print
Click to expand...

As usual, Ken Talks a lot of sense! Once you get over his tendency for bias, exaggeration and spurious facts! :lol:

I don't think there is an easy calculation that exists to answer this question. It's certainly not simply one of mega-pixels, nor is it just about viewing distance (Ken's theory). It is both of those things, and also the pixel size/format, lens, subject matter, lighting, post processing etc etc. And that's even before you start printing.

There a famous article on Luminous Landscape where in a blind test nobody could tell the difference between a set of 19in prints, taken on a Canon G10 compact and a 39mp Hassleblad! http://www.luminous-landscape.com/reviews/kidding.shtml There are always exceptions and extreme examples which make it impossible to say, yes, this will do it, or no, it won't.

Hear's another way of looking at it. In the publishing industry the generally accepted standard for high quality magazine reproduction is 300dpi. If you look at a decent quality magazine, that's what it will be. That translates into 6.0m dpi for a 10in print, or 8.7m for A4. For the OP's proposed 18in print, it's 19.4m dpi, but then you wouldn't look at a print that size from such a close distance... :thinking:
 
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