How many square meters is possible to print a photo from a film of 35mm and still look OK??

Question

I have to explain two things. The first is that by "still look OK". I'm asking about maximum resolution or quality. Maybe it will be useful to mention something about those issues.

The other thing is about the unit measure, it will be good to have a measure with the "International System of Units". In this case is meters, but be free to move to centimeters if you like, but please specified this very precisely because it can a source of confusion.

Answer 1

I will let you do the math. a meter is a little over 39 US inches.

So I will tell you that an unprofessional, but very good photo on 35mm color film of about 200 ISO should start breaking up at 18" x 27" (retaining the 3:2 aspect ratio). The higher you go in 1SO, the quicker it will start to disintegrate in quality. The converse is true also, the lower the ISO, will improve its ability to be enlarged. These are for better than average, but not professionally done photographs. Slides, or transparencies, can probably be developed larger, but again tht depends on the ISO of the film.

There will be a lot of people disagree with me, but increasing grain is going to be your problem. Generally the lower the ISO (Ilford makes a 35mm 50 ISO), the better the enlargment.

Answer 2

Your question lacks information.
But if I get it. You want to blow up a negative from a 35mm piece of film and need to know how large a print you can make?

That would be dependent on how serveral factors. like how dense is the film that that was taken, ISO?, and what resolution you have set for the actual photo taken. Then you have to consider the image as you blow up the pic on the film paper. How large is the light camera that lays down the image, and what type of focusing lens does it have. How sharp can you get the image the larger you make the print on the paper. Which is tied to the density of the negative. As you will find the larger the image produced, the more "Grainy" the image will become. This causes it to be more difficult to view clearly as you increase the size.

With the right pic, and the right imaging camera lens and lighting, you could produce a very large image, (even as big as a 10x10 foot wall.

Answer 3

If you look at the print with a magnifying glass, anything larger than full-page will start to fall apart.
For poster size and larger - when you start getting into square meters - you'd really want to use medium format or even large format film.
The largest size with 'acceptable quality' will depend on your viewing distance.