How would I take a picture to be printed on a 10ft by 10ft canvas?

Question

I have a Canon t4i/650D and was wondering if there was a way to take a picture that could be printed on a 10ft by 10ft canvas? If the t4i will not work, what camera would I need?

Thank you for your info.

Answer 1

The major limitation appears to be the width of a print that can currently be printed which is 44".



http://www.largephotoprinting.com/ Maximum width = 44" by almost any length. From their site.



http://bigprintsusa.com/ Maximum width = 44" by a length of 72". From their site.



Your image file will need to be as perfect as humanly possible. Camera on a tripod, maximum resolution, ISO 100, lens at f8 or f11, mirror locked up, wireless remote to release the shutter, perfect exposure, perfect lighting and absolutely zero subject movement.



At the maximum resolution of your camera - 5184x3456 - by printing at 28dpi (dots per inch) the 3456 side would yield a 123.43'' long print and the 5184 side would yield a 185.1" wide print. Since the largest print width is 44" you'd need need 2 sections 44" wide and 1 section 32" wide. You'll also have to deal with losing a large amount of the 5184 side since to maintain the size you want you'll have to crop 5184 to 3456 (losing 1728 or 1/3 of the resolution) thus making your image file a square.



Be forewarned though that the results - even if you can get it printed - will be poor quality unless you plan on viewing your 10' x 10' print from about 150 to 200 feet. At 15 or 20 feet all you'll see is a horribly pixelated mess. Remember that billboards are usually printed at 20dpi and are viewed from 300 or more feet away as you're driving along at 55mph.



At your camera's maximum resolution a print made at a magazine quality 300dpi would be 11" x 17".

Answer 2

The T4i will be fine for that.



You don't need a lot of resolution for a 10x10 canvas because you will likely be viewing it from several feet away.





You are basically looking at a canvas with a density of around 40dpi. 100 is the norm for canvas, so you will be basically printing at 1/2 the normal resolution. Unless you are standing 6 inches away from the canvas, it will probably not even be noticable.









Edit:



If you want to test it, resize the image to 10'X10' at 100 dpi (12,000X12,000 pixels) and then just crop out a 10" section to have printed. See if you are happy with those results before you try to print any bigger. That way you don't have to waste money on the large print to see if the quality is acceptable to you.









I routinely made 8' long canvases with a 12mp camera that came out fine.

Answer 3

I routinely have images printed that go onto the side of buses, the Photo Lab I use has a 10ft wide printer and there are larger ones around. It does cost around £250 - £350 per print depending on media for that size.



Your image file needs to be as perfect as possible and from a Raw file, I have never successfully been able to use a Jpeg at these sizes. Nothing burnt out to white, no pixels blocked out to black, no cloning as you will see the distorted pixels when printed this big. Exposure has to be spot on, any minor error unnoticeable on a small print will be obvious in a large print.

.

The smallest sensor resolution I have successfully used is a 10Mp sensor, but images are better from my 16Mp camera and better than that from my 40Mp medium format camera. The difference is visible, but the 10Mp ones are more than acceptable. The larger the resolution of the sensor the less 'interpolation' is required to 'pad out' the file to cover the 10ft of the print. 'Interpolation' is adding pixels (inventing pixels from the surrounding data) to 'pad out' the file which has to be kept to a minimum which is why we reduce the PPI.



The PPI of the image needs to be reduced the larger you print, not to be confused with DPI which is the resolution the printer will print the image file at. I work it out to be a PPI of just 55, any more than that is just making the file larger and increasing 'interpolation' without adding any more detail.



This means that every pixel will still be only 1/55th of an Inch square, not that you'll see them as the printer will 'dither' them into continuous tones.



Chris

Answer 4

You can get so called "low head turbines" that will generate electricity with a head from 2ft to 10ft. You will be able to generate about 100W at 2ft and about 1kW at 10ft. Flow rate would be around 450 gallons per minute with a 2ft head and around 1000 gpm with a 10ft head. These turbines are generally used with a DC output, a battery bank and an inverter. This is done so that energy can be stored for peak demand times. I have seen systems like this used by remote communities in mountainous regions all around the world.

Answer 5

Canvas is more forgiving, and at 10' x 10', one would assume you are not looking at it from inches away. So lets use a dpi of 100. that means you need 10' x 12" x 100 dpi = 12,000 pixels per side, or 144MP. That is a big file.



Your best bet is to do a composite photo, like a panorama, where you stitch a whole bunch of individual frames together to get one image. Here is a tutorial on how to capture such an image (using a camera no more powerful than your own):

http://blog.buiphotos.com/2009/07/the-brenizer-method-explained-with-directions/

Answer 6

You are going to need a large-format camera, preferably something like an 8" x 10" (20 x 25 cm) and either fine-grain film or a hideously expensive digital back if you want to avoid a pixellated mess. You are also going to need a very sturdy tripod and a rather expensive specialist lens. With the digital back, you would probably have to remortgage your house. If it's just film, then you should get away with the price of a luxury car.

Answer 7

If the resolution on the picture is at 300dpi then you should be able to print it out to be 10X10 ft but you'll have to search on the internet for website that make canvases that size. I personally don't know of any that make a size that big. I do know it'll be supper expensive.

Answer 8

How?, any file will go out this size, but if not with enough resolution you will see only squares.

Also you need to get it out into pieces; printers are not so big.