ThinkFlood Blog

Last month I wrote a little bit about how people still seem to be stuck on printing their digital pictures. Today my goal is to further develop the case for keeping everything digital by comparing the experience of viewing printed pictures with viewing them on a display device such as a monitor.

After our third child was born a couple of years ago, my wife and I decided that we should have our family sit down for a professional photographer. After some struggles to get the children to sit still, we managed to take some great pictures, which we then had printed on canvas and framed. Altogether we bought three pictures: a large, 20″ x 24″ shot of the whole family, and two slightly smaller shots, one of the children, and one of my wife and me. Total cost: about $2,200.

Of course it is certainly possible to go to a mall or department store and get some 8″ x 10″ prints for $30 or $40, but this size is about the limit of what we can achieve with 35mm film and glossy prints — anything larger begins to look noticeably grainy. To have real portraits taken and printed is many times more expensive, meaning that this opportunity is rare or even out of reach for most families.

Now let’s consider a different viewing experience: what we get from our televisions. Most living/family¬†room television sets today measure at least 30″ in diagonal – roughly the size of the large 20″ x 24″ frame that we purchased. But today even a 30″ television looks puny compared with the monstrous high definition television sets that we seem to be gobbling up. Measuring 40″, 50″, even 65″ or more along the diagonal, we (at least the males of our race) are transfixed by the stunning colors and detail that we see on these screens. These mammoth TVs must have resolution far surpassing 35mm film, right?

Actually, no. Currently the state-of-the-art in consumer digital television is so-called “Full HD” – also known as 1080p. This format provides 1,080 lines of vertical resolution and 1,920 lines of horizontal resolution, or roughly about 2 million picture elements (megapixels). Now, all of you digital camera lovers out there know that 2 megapixels is actually not such a big deal. In fact, today a decent, $250 point-and-shoot camera from a name brand such as Canon or Nikon generally offers 5-7 megapixel resolution, and fancy single lens reflex (SLR) cameras get up to 10, 16, or even 21 megapixels. This means that the pictures my wife snaps using the ultracompact camera she carries in her purse actually oversample the resolution of an HDTV by at least 2X to 4X. And while there appears to be some debate about how to compare 35mm film resolution to what we get with a digital camera, this study from Professor John Hart at the University of Colorado suggests that we achieve roughly the same result using a 10 megapixel digital SLR as with a 35mm film SLR. In other words, digital pictures can look amazing on an HDTV measuring up to several feet in diagonal, while similar prints begin to look tired once they are larger than a piece of letter-size paper.

How can we account for this difference? I believe the issue is reflective media versus luminous media. In the case of a print, we are viewing light bouncing off the surface of the picture. Especially in the case of photos with a matte finish (where reflected light is more diffuse), it is relatively easy to see minor defects in picture quality. By contrast, in the case of luminous displays – such as televisions and monitors – the brightness of the display itself tends to wash out minor defects. Thus, when we look at pictures on these devices, we can enlarge the image many times more — giving us a more premium viewing experience. If we consider the cost of a professional photo shoot, canvas printing, and custom framing, all of a sudden what was once a rare luxury with printed pictures can now be standard fare with digital display technology.