Printing A3 photos... The ideal camera?

JenniferK

JenniferK

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Hi all. :)

I currently own a Nikon D40 that has served me well over the past couple of years but I don't think it will produce the quality of pictures I will need for future endeavours.

I am looking to get a new camera with a good number of megapixels (D40 has 6.1) so I could print high quality A3 photos.

Can any of you advise me on what cameras I should be considering for this?

Thank you in advance!
 
Have you tried to print out an A3 image from your D40?
 
I'm not a Nikon user, but with a decent lens I can't see why it shouldn't be fine. It's certainly worth a try first before splashing a load of cash.

cheers
 
As others have mentioned the D40 should be fine and I'd try some large prints before spending money on a different camera.

As an aside do you have an a3 printer or is that another expense you'll have? I ask because quality a3 printers can be pricey and if you have money to spend you may find it's better to increase your printer budget and keep hold of the D40.
 
ive done many a 18x12 print from a D40 and its 18-55 kit lens

No probs what so ever
 
I've seen great A3 prints from a 3.3Mpix Casio QV3500, your glass and/or printer are likely to hold you back more than the D40.
 
Welsh Dan said:
your glass and/or printer are likely to hold you back more than the D40.
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Would agree with this, if you're printing at home, I'd be tempted to purchase a very good quality printer, as there's nothing more demoralising and frustrating than having a good photo not printed out well. :thumbs:
 
Thank you for your help, everyone. I haven't tried to print out an A3, so I'll have to see how one comes out. Thank you again! :)
 
JenniferK said:
Thank you for your help, everyone. I haven't tried to print out an A3, so I'll have to see how one comes out. Thank you again! :)
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I've printed some great A3 & Super A3's from daughter's D40 and my old 300D - the pics have a noise free 'cleanness' to them that's hard to beat. I was looking at raws I took with the 300D of my daughter's wedding a while ago and using more modern DP programmes have just printed off some stunning pics from them - makes you wonder whether the constant rush to upgrade is really necessary!
 
There's a nice, easy to understand, chart and explanation HERE.

Although it shows that from 6MP you can only get about 10"x7" at 300dpi, in practice and with careful interpolation you can go much bigger and still get acceptable looking prints.
 
fulwood said:
makes you wonder whether the constant rush to upgrade is really necessary!
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I think we can get the answer to this from the way Canon and Nikon are advertising their new £850 'entry level' DSLRs. All the bullet points are in new or improved features which are at best a secondary consideration when it comes to image quality - 'new video recording', 'better continuous shooting FPS', 'more megapixels'. Very few of them advertise on the basis 'this camera will produce sharper pictures/better colours than its predecessor'. :P
 
Don't forget file format!

Shoot in RAW and save as a TIFF.

JPEG's are compressed and no matter what size you save at, you lose information.

So to maximise the pixels at your disposal save as a TIFF and print from that. I've printed to A3 from an old Olympus E1000 RS which was a massive 1.5m pixels! But the optics were superb. It's the old adage though, the lens needs to resolve the image before the sensor can begin to record it and a system is only as good as it's weakest link.
 
Just thinking about this - the image is going to be re-interpreted as clustered round dots from an inkjet instead of solid pixels standing next to each other in any case. Magazines print CMYK with rosettes and get away with really poor image quality because of this. I would have thought you should get decent quality above 150dpi at A3. And remember that the larger image size of A3 is going to wow your eyes more overall in any case. Does that make sense?!

I'm not keen on interpolation - you can't generate information that wasn't there in the first place, so it's the computer's best guess and may look blurry. But again, depends on how fussy you want to be.

The only reason I can think of that you really would need more resolution would be if (like me) your composition still isn't 100% when shot and you want to crop a fair bit...

Best of luck
 
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