Most wedding photos are relatively small and 6Mp will be ample. They also
tend not to have any shots at infinity which is something my 3Mp camera is
less happy about - the closer you get to the subject the nearer the quality
gets to 35mm. This effect I think is due to digital quality degrading
nastily at the edges of it's performance whereas film tends to lose
definition gracefully.
In the case of the 24x20 print you have made a mistake with the digital
size. It should be 6MBx3 (RGB) hence 18MB and about 6 interpolated pixels
for every real one. I have found that any noise in digital images is less
intrusive than film grain and the cleaner image can be enlarged by a greater
factor - particularly if you use a specialist program like Geniune Fractals
to perform the enlargement. The Nikon D1x is by all accounts almost
noiseless so I wouldn't expect any problem going to 20x24.
Also most of the general public like the look of good quality digital images
and are usually unaware of most digital artefacts. I printed an A3 on my
1270 using PGPP and I have yet to put it in front of anyone who isn't
impressed. The more well informed are even more amazed to find out it is of
digital origin and has been produced on an inkjet.There are a few digital
artefacts but I would think 6Mp will print A3 without any real problem. The
larger 24*20 will probably suffer a few minor problems nothing too
noticeable.
Don't take my word for it, download an image from the sample pages pages of
this review (or find another) :
and try a 24*20 print. If you have a decent inkjet you can get a good idea
by enlarging to 24*20 and then printing each section on 6 A4 sheets or just
print a single A4 section. Do remeber though that the inkjets dithering help
hide some artefacts you may prefer to send the A4 section to a digital lab
with a Fuji Frontier or something similar.
I did write a few scribbles about the pros and cons of a prosumer 3Mp
digital canera here
I wouldn't use it for commercial wedding photography but 6Mp I probably
would. Any minor image quality problems (that I think almost no-one will
notice) are more than made up for with the ability to see the bride closed
her eyes or the page boy stuck his tongue out.
I suspect there may be some extra orders as well if you can show a complete
set of samples to the guests at the reception.
Steve
----- Original Message -----
From: "Robert Meier" <robert_meier_photo@yahoo.com>
To: <filmscanners@halftone.co.uk>
Sent: Thursday, August 16, 2001 5:51 AM
Subject: filmscanners: film vs. digital cameras - wedding/commercial
photography
> I have been talking with a few wedding and commercial photographers who
> expressed their intention to go digital. Cameras mentioned were Fuji S1
> and Nikon D1x both with 6 Mpixel. Now these same photographers, as all
> others, say MF is absolutely necessary for the big enlargments. This
> seems to be a contradiction as the digital cameras mentioned only
> produce approx. a 6M*12bit=9Mbyte file compared to about
> (2*4000)^2*36bit=274Mbytes for a 4000dpi scan or approx 1000Mbytes
> assuming film has an 'equivalent' of about 8000dpi.
> Assuming you want a 24x20 print @300dpi you need
> 24*20*300*300*8bit/channel*3channels=124Mbytes of data. The digital
> camera gives you only 6M*8bit/channel=6Mbytes. This is about 124/6=20,
> i.e. 19 out of 20 pixels have to be interpolated. That sounds quite
> unresonable to me. Does anybody have any experience with that and
> throughs their MF scannera away to go digital?
>
> Also do you have any idea what the going hourly rate for wedding
> photographer and commercial photographers is?
>
> Robert
>
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