how can i take an actual size photograph?

Question

How would you take a photograph so that the output is the actual size of the subject? Say I take a picture of a mobile phone. Presuming that I dont use any zoom, how can i take a picture, so that, when I re print that picture, the mobile phone shows as the actual size.?

Answer 1

There are a couple ways to do this...

1) Purchase an expensive camera / lense combination that captures at a 1:1 ratio

2) Tell the people printing it what size the main subject of the print needs to be. (Most quick labs won't do this).

3) Photograph the image, pull it into an image editing software (such as Photoshop) and crop the image so that the cell phone is the actual size while still fitting in a standard size print and take that image to a local photo processing location.

Answer 2

The output has always to do with the machine it's coming from, nothing with your camera. You can try to put a measure instrument next to the mobile phone. use a good computer program. Once the print of the measure instrument is correct than you have the actual size of the phone. That's probably the easy est way to do it.

Answer 3

when people only had film cameras the only way to get an actual picture the same size as the object would have been to use film at least the same size as the object. now with digital cameras i believe their is a ratio of mega pixel to picture size.

Answer 4

If you use photoshop you can specify the size of the image to match your dimmensions.