New Year's Printing
I have to confess, we’ve actually done a couple of printing sessions already this year. One was on New Year’s day, and the other was later in the month (stuff keeps getting in the way of posting, but we’ve been active). Both sessions were combinations of wanting to test some things out and “gee, I wonder what this looks like printed large.” So I’ll just dive right into the prints.
Ever since we decided to switch over to Lightroom, with the possibility of using a plug-in that can improve some of the demosaicing issues Lightroom had with Fujifilm files, I’ve wanted to see just how big a print we can expect to make from the 40 megapixel sensors on our X-T5 cameras. Since we’d purchased an A2 box of paper later last year, I figured it was time to print BIG! So Ann and I prepared a couple of images to print at the largest paper size our printer will handle.
Naturally, I had a range of images from the road trip with Len to choose from. I must confess that the New Year had come upon us faster than I’d hoped, so instead of running my selection through the Lightroom process I was planning on testing, I pushed out the image from my old Capture One catalog. That was a mistake because, although the image may look good on screen, I definitely did something wrong on export and wound up being one of the fuzziest images I’d ever printed.
It wasn’t until I looked at Ann’s images (which sharpness wise looked fine) that I thought to look at the file size of the TIFF . . . and found it really small. Like about 1/5th the size it should be. Somehow I did something in the export process that shipped out a greatly reduced file which, when you blow it up much larger than normal, is guaranteed to leave one disappointed. I decided I would have to go back to the images and do it right.
I hadn’t made the same mistake with the second image I printed. It was from the Q2MR, which has an even higher megapixel count. I’d worked that one in Lightroom and didn’t need to run it through the extra program for demosaicing (it’s all just tonal values, no bayer sensor to demosaic colors).
I was more than pleased with this print. It is rich in tonal values and has that combination of visual depth and chaotic detail that is dense undergrowth. It’s impressive how the print reads even better than the image does on a monitor. That’s why we print.
Ann had worked on an image from our trip to the Painted Hills last May. Not one of the Painted Hills per se, but from our drive around the area on Saturday afternoon. I’d seen this image on her monitor in December and asked her to develop it. Like so many of Ann’s images, it gives a real sense of the landscape and how one might just walk into it and experience what we felt at the time.
We tested a couple of different versions of this shot. Ann wanted to see how different developing approaches appeared in print versus on the monitor. As with my black and white image, the print version we like best of this image has a real sense of depth, with these receding layers that draw you into the image. The high pixel count and the demosaicing and sharpening from the DXO plug-in means that even the distant trees and grasses are razor sharp.
Ann’s second Image was from one of our recent trips out to local woodland that I’ve blogged about. This was one of those types of images that you’re not sure how it may turn out, so all you can do is photograph it the best you can, develop it and then print it to see (and learn). Hopefully, over time you learn what works (and doesn’t), and figure out how to make images in difficult to photograph situations that are worth looking at.
Ann really struggled with developing this image, but I think it was worth it. She was always going to have difficulty with the busy background (oh, if we have a foggy day . . . this would be the place to come to), but the image still has some lovely tones and the branches reaching forward really give a presence to the image. Best of all, the leaves hang in the air as if they’re just floating, almost like fireflies. All that conveys a sense of spaciousness in the foreground that Ann (and I) was hoping for. Now for a better background condition!
It took a few weeks, but I finally got back to doing what I originally wanted to with our going BIG print session. I went to an original file in Lightroom, decided upon a slightly different image (but for the same reason), carefully examining to make sure that the image had a sharp foreground and background. I ran it through the DXO converter, and then developed the image
I thought that the tree to the upper left detracted a bit from the first image I’d selected (in part because of the tree, but those are the kind of things you learn from printing), so I went with a cleaner background, that gives more emphasis to the Island in the Sky. This image also includes more of the mid-ground to the left, which adds more texture, tonality and interest to the area, creating a tonal line that leads towards Island in the Sky. I think it was a better choice of images.
When it came time to print the image, I decided to use Lightroom’s print module (might as well learn it now) and printed directly from Lightroom. It really provides a nice tool for composing the image on the page and providing some key information (like it would print at around 340 dots per inch at native resolution) that gave me hope that 40 megapixels is more than enough for a big print. And it is. Everything is sharp (saving a loss of depth of field along the very bottom edge) and the image retains the quality of light and the textures I was hoping for.
Ann’s black and white print had given me some hope that one of my recent walk images would print well, despite the mass chaos of the image.
Oh how it did. The print is amazing. You can see each and every tree (helped I think by wind-blown snow on the right side of each tree). And like Ann’s print, the foreground tree branches with leaves present this ethereal hovering presence that cuts across the middle of the print, contrasting strongly with the verticality of the trees, all the while several channels of snow covered foreground draw you into the depths of the woods. As Ann and I talked about this print, we discussed a post I had written about a John Sexton print (go to the bottom of the blog page and in the search bar type “John Sexton” and take a look at the post, “Why does it work?” Or if you’re as lazy as I am, you can just click here.). Many of the things I discuss in that post (read: learned from studying the image) are contained in the above image and are what make this one work. I doubt that I would have known where to precisely place myself and frame the above image if I had not studied the John Sexton image. That’s why we study the works of masters. Thank you John Sexton!
I must admit, as much as I was a bit disappointed with that very first image that came out of these printing sessions, the others have gotten me very excited about how these images can look when printed large (A2 sheets are approximately 16.5” x 23”). You’ve got to love today’s technology, both on the camera end and the printer end.
The only drawback though is how expensive printing big is. At €10 per sheet plus the price of ink (larger prints require even more ink), we may have to show a bit of restraint, accept printing smaller for the most part, and saving the big stuff for the best images. As Devon once mentioned, First World Problems.