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[Lamnidae]

Originally Posted by Homeslice

An older camera I used to have had a compression routine where pixels close to each other would be forced into the same color. Even if you selected the "Fine" setting.

Originally Posted by Papa_Complex

I've seen quality 30X20 prints out of a 5MPix Olympus E-1. A travel/tourism shooting acquaintance of mine has had 30 FOOT banners up on the walls of Skydome, taken with his Canon 20D. You have to start with a quality shot; good camera, good lenses. from there you can up-scale to ridiculous levels. A little 5mm sensor with a 7.5mm lens just doesn't cut it, especially not when the 'camera' has been tweaked for consumer style output (over-saturated, over-sharpened).

Originally Posted by Homeslice

For 8.5x11 I would say you need a minimum of 5MP, but after that, lens quality, focus quality, and color balancing become more important IMO.

Also you need to study what kind of compression algorithm is being used.

Precisely.

Probably one of my favorite shots i've taken of fireworks.....