On Sunday I photographed a group of about 70 people in front of their church. They wanted a 13X19 to hang inside. I printed it on an Epson 2200 on Premimum Luster paper. they think the print is great. I think it is acceptable but not great. It was shot with a D60 and 24-70 Canon lens. Question, would it have been lots better with a 1Ds and lots more pixels? I would like to be able to justify a 1Ds to the wife so help me out folks.
Rod

Yes.

Chris

I agree with Chris. In my experience 13x19's are quite a bit better with the 1Ds than the 10D, especially for large group shots or landscapes where you want to see a lot of fine details.

This is where the 1Ds shines. The D60 is a fine camera, but it just doen't have enough resolution to render enough detail on each photo in an enlarged group photo.

10D prints are roughly 7x10" at 300 pixels per inch (usually regarded as optimum print resolution setting) and 1Ds prints are more like 10x14".. which means one need not do a heck of a lot of "enlarging" (either interpolation or just reducing the pixels per inch setting) to get 13x19" out of a 1Ds.. but the 10D and D60 need to be almost doubled in linear size to get to that printsize.. and you definitely lose detail when you quadruple the number of pixels through interpolation..

and you don't want to ask your printer to make smooth quality prints at 150 PPI.. ain't gonna happen..

1Ds is a much better large printmaker.. also much better for shooting pix that will sell to magazines, as its native size is almost big enough to do a double page spread.. again, not much interpolation needed..

that said, the 10D and D60 can make some pretty nice large prints, you just need to be good at unsharp masking and the subtle stuff..

I'll strongly ditto the simple: "Yes."

i say... depends

quality wise - SURE

but take it as an investment.... how many of those are you going to sell? If the customer is happy with the current print - then the added "in your pocket" value of having the D1s is simply - NULL - 0...

look at it from a buz point of view, not our "crazy about photo and stuff point of view"

that said.. when you get the first "No, that is not good enough for me" from one customer, then go ahead and plunge the $7000 +

just an opinion of course