Photo Credit: © Image Mechanics

Billboard Schmillboard!

What file size is needed for a billboard? This is a question we receive on an almost daily basis. So we made some calls and ran some tests to put this debate to rest.

Most people think that billboards need to be shot on the biggest and best digital camera possible. That’s not true. When printing a 14 foot x 48 foot billboard, Clear Channel, the largest monopoly media company in the US, requests a 3.75 inch x 12.25 inch file anywhere between 300 and 600dpi. The Leaf 22-megapixel backs produce an original file size of 13.333 inches x 17.787 inches at 300 dpi - right in the middle of their specs. Big enough, to say the least, and most images aren’t run the full length of the billboard! Check out Clear Channel sample billboards. Don’t take my word for it, here’s the link to Clear Channel info and specs. We spoke to other billboard companies as well and were told that they were fine with any image shot on a 10-megapixel camera or better - Canon 5D anyone?

So our conclusion, size doesn’t matter, as long as it’s 10 inches megapixels or larger, wink wink.

External Hard Drive Failure - Easy Fix

A friend of mine recently had two daisy chained LaCie hard drives fail on him. Unfortunately, one was backing up the other. He bought a new LaCie and plugged it in and copied a recent job that he was prepping for delivery over to the new drive. Then his computer gave up the ghost and shut down for good. He bought a new computer, plugged in the hard drives hoping for the best but none of them would mount - including his brand new LaCie. Before shelling out a couple of thousand bucks for hard drive recovery, he brought the drives to the Image Mechanics bat cave studio for us to take a crack at.


If a hard drive makes an ominous clicking sound, it is about to die. Get your data copied immediately. Failure after a clicking noise usually means data recovery where they replace the hard drive controller or pull the platters out of your drive and rebuild them in a new mechanism (this is why data recovery is expensive).

If multiple external drives fail simultaneously, it is probably due to a power surge on your firewire port that burns out the controller in your enclosure. Remember that the drive inside your firewire enclosure is an ATA or SATA drive just like inside your computer. There is a firewire bridge that converts ATA to firewire. This bridge or controller is often the failure point.

We cracked open his LaCie drives, pulled the bare hard drive out and hooked it up to our Wiebetech DriveDock. His drives were fine. We sent him over to our friends at Melrose Mac to get a new enclosure for his bare hard drive and he lived happily ever after.


As managing partner of the full service digital capture company, Image Mechanics, Michael Britt works at the leading edge of digital technology. An impromptu photo show in the 4th grade set the stage for a life devoted to the craft of photography. He worked in film and television, shooting unit stills and galleries for over 10 years and served as a computer consultant for renowned photographer Michael Grecco. At Image Mechanics he was instrumental in developing their revolutionary digital capture workflow and continues to brand the company’s unique style. As a workflow specialist, Britt consulted on Aperture and wrote the manual for Adobe Lightroom. In addition he has written articles for PDN online and contributes to several online communities including the Image Mechanics Blog - DeathToFilm.