Photographs and Images
When it comes to aviation photography one question frequently asked is how big a print can I make. It’s not the right question, the first question should be how do I consume media. If you still read physical magazines, or physical books – then indeed you may well want physical photographs to hold. But lets be honest, there are many other ways to consume the medium.
If for example you use a digital photo frame, or view on a monitor then 1920 X 1080 or 2 Megapixels will be more than enough. A high quality Six X Four inch glossy print is also nearly 2 Megapixels (1800 X 1200). If you want to use a 55″ TV to display photographs. They will look great at 2 Megapixels (1920 X 1080), but you could make the jump to 4K (3840 X 2160) or even 8K where you’d need a whopping 30 Megapixels (7680 X 4320).
For high quality photographic prints, that will be viewed at less than arms length you need 300 pixels per inch (PPI). You can reduce this to 200 PPI and still have perfectly acceptable prints, you can even drop to 150 PPI for “poster” quality. See the table below, for guidance.
| Megapixels | Typical Dimensions | Print Size (300 PPI) | Print Size (200 PPI) |
| 2 MP | 1600 x 1200 | 5.3 x 4″ | 8 x 6″ |
| 5 MP | 2592 x 1944 | 8.6 x 6.5″ | 13 x 9.7″ |
| 8 MP | 3264 x 2448 | 10.9 x 8.2″ | 16.3 x 12.2″ |
| 12 MP | 4000 x 3000 | 13.3 x 10″ | 20 x 15″ |
| 24 MP | 6000 x 4000 | 20 x 13.3″ | 30 x 20″ |
| 48 MP | 8000 x 6000 | 26.7 x 20″ | 40 x 30″ |
| 108 MP | 12000 x 9000 | 40 x 30″ | 60 x 45″ |
My Photographs
If you look at the table, you can see that the print sizes will suit most needs even from a modest resolution camera. But a far more reasonable approach to take is to ask yourself, how many prints do I have that are larger than Six by Four inches – the answer will probably surprise you.
The Pixel Problem
If you are one of the millions of us that consume digital content through social media, whether it is Instagram, Facebook, Pintrest or any other source. Then you may well know that we are now talking about images that are just over 1 MP, or just about 1080 x 1080.
This allows loads of flexibility when it comes to cropping, where you can be pretty aggressive and throw away 50% of the pixels on the lowest resolution camera. To the highest resolution camera, where you get to throw away 99.1% of the 108 MP available.
The problem becomes more acute when you look at these image files on a monitor, where you are viewing at 100% – you can see little of the image.
Photographs Courtesy of United States Air Force
Dave Munro