What kind of camera do I need for 4x7 FT. gallery quality prints? (Newbie here)

[drmike]

One time in Delhi I wondered why, in a typically busy intersection, nobody was using the brand new pedestrian overpass. The answer: in designing the overpass they had made the mistake of making the railings opaque. So the overpass had been turned into a public toilet almost instantly.

In West Africa some years ago the deep storm drains either side of the road seemed a good spot as well.

Remind me, do trolls live under bridges?

Mike

[Ken Bennett]

Serious as a heart attack. Too late tho just bought nikon d3200 for $250. tried out a test stitch using hugin and got a 150 MB image at 150 dpi. Measuring 8,506 pixels wide and 5662 tall with bit depth of 32. Do you think this would be good enough for the print size I am looking for?

To update my previous post, let me add that I have 10 or 15 very large canvas prints hanging around our offices, 5-6 feet wide, printed from single shots (not stitched), and they look terrific. If you print at 4x6 feet that's the same proportions as your sensor, so 4x7 feet is not much of a crop. You might get a test print made to see if you like the image quality from a single image. (You can do some math and print just a small crop of the center of the image as, say, an 8x10 and it will be the same quality as the full image printed 4x6 feet. Do this test on the same materials, and make sure you view it from the same distance you'd view the larger print.)

So, yeah, an image with 8500 pixels would print well on canvas, in my experience, but your requirements may differ so it's worth doing the actual print test. Good luck.

[TonyVentourisPhotography]

Alienskin Blow up.  Use it for 2x upres and you can get away just fine, especially on canvas.  That basically makes most cameras in the 20mp range more than plenty with a few stitched shots.  I print many large panoramas (over 9' long) and have never had an issue.  Stitching is the way to go.  Then all you need is a decent vertical pixel measurement.  This becomes quite easy even from the 12-24mp range.  Your best quality will come from stitching no matter what. 

Even with a 100mp sensor... cropping to 16:9 is throwing away a lot of image.  Ide rather use the whole sensor and put a few shots together.  Final quality will be much nicer.  And then you don't have to worry about corner quality either for the most part.

[Joe Towner]

Before spending much time and effort on the capture side, you should investigate how much it's going to cost to print & mount these images.  For this, look to commercial labs and fine art printers in your area.  Chat with them as to what you'll need in an image.  Gallery quality at that size will be over $1,000 so if you're doing a series of these, know what your costs are up front.

Based on what your printing costs will be, you'd be happier with the results using a full frame camera and quality lenses.  Expect to spend $3-5k on this.

Your subject matter leaves this thread very questionable, but to each their own.  Generally speaking, start with the camera you purchased, learn and stick to smaller print sizes for now.  Making a print bigger doesn't make it better.

[Alskoj]

Get a 4x5 field camera and shoot transparency film.  Drum scan the processed film and print it as big as you want.