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Does anyone know the required resolution for a photograph to be used on a billboard? Would the Canon 7D be able to provide a large enough file size to meet the requirements?

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I think this might be better framed as "what resolution would be needed to print at billboard sized?", because we don't really know how the photo will be used in the advertisement otherwise. – dpollitt Oct 21 '11 at 18:05

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Resolution becomes less of an issue the farther the viewer is from the image. As billboards are meant to be viewed from quite some distance, they are usually printed at a relatively low resolution - sometimes as low as 9dpi!

It really depends on how detailed and complex the photo is, but I'm sure the 18 megapixels provided by the 7D will provide more than enough resolution for just about any billboard.

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Also, they have very expensive (at the time i saw the program on it) fractal algorithms they use to upscale the photographs to required billboard sizes. Even if the resolution is low it will make sure it looks smooth and not pixely – Dreamager Oct 21 '11 at 17:11
Thanks guys. I appreciate the help. – Gabriel Oct 21 '11 at 19:22
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For reference, the best fractal resizer is Genuine Fractals (ononesoftware.com/products/suite/perfect-resize/?ind). They renamed it to "Perfect Resize" in deference to what everyone was using it for. – Steve Ross Oct 21 '11 at 21:58
I have used Genuine Fractals, it is very impressive I thought. – dpollitt Oct 21 '11 at 22:41
Awesome, I'll be sure to look into that. Thanks! – Gabriel Oct 22 '11 at 0:58

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