Begonia
103mp
1850 images
Print size: 36"x33"
I get this as being 300 pixels per inch, so I guess your "full size print" would be 150 ppi?
That sounds consistent with my experience about what's needed for a big print to look good up close.
An interesting thing is most people tend to stand back to view the large prints even when encouraged to get close.
That is interesting.
Max Lyons, who made the
first gigapixel panorama (of Bryce Canyon), reported exactly the opposite. His experience, at the PMA Spring 2004 show where a suitably huge print was displayed, was that people would approach as needed to see the finest details.
I can think of a lot of aspects that might explain the difference. Gigapixel images were brand new at the time, so viewers might have simply wanted to experience the unique capability. That might be amplified because of the audience, PMA tending to attract tool-and-technique people.
But I wonder if the nature of the image is also part of the difference.
Bryce Canyon is a big place, so even the finest details appearing in Lyons' image show things that are human scale or larger. One of the actual-pixel crops in the above link shows an entire person only about 50 pixels high! As a result, no matter how close you looked at the Bryce Canyon print, you would still be seeing things that you're familiar with.
In contrast, the begonia is a small subject, and the details shown in a 36x33 inch print would be things that you would normally see only through a 10X-20X microscope. I imagine that those of us who are used to looking through microscopes would find much to catch and keep our attention at that scale. But I would not be surprised to see that most other people would be more attracted by the composition than by the fine details, and that those people would just back up to a "normal" viewing distance.
Any thoughts along those lines? Have you asked any of your viewers about it?
--Rik
