Nob Hill, San Francisco. 20×30″ printed area – Ultraprint on Permajet Portrait White matte cotton paper; $1,500 including DHL shipping anywhere in the world. Limited edition of 10 prints, never to be printed again. Click on to order… It seems that some of the print offerings over on the gallery site are getting lost in the ether – so I will continue to offer some of what I feel are the exceptionally special images here.
Nob Hill is one of those: to me, it captures the feeling of arriving in San Francisco on a late summer afternoon; there’s the excitement of finally getting there, the slight disappointment of the overpriced hotel room without a prime view, but made up for by the gorgeous light and view from the window that between the terraced buildings, period architecture and fire escapes, could only be San Francisco.
Crop from somewhere around the centre – the whole image is like this.
This particular image will also be the highest resolution print we’ve ever made using our proprietary Ultraprint process. Normal ‘excellent quality’ images are around 240-300 real DPI. We’re printing at 720; it takes a loupe to register all of the detail, but the effect to the naked eye is one of continuous tone and detail; think retina screen but with four times the density. It was stitched from a large number of 52MP 645Z images with approximately 1,300 manual control points, it’s very easy to get lost in for hours and most certainly feels like you’re gazing out through a window: it’s all a bit surreal, and there’s a very strong feeling of looking at the scene, rather than an image of the scene. The difference is subtle, but important. Those of you who’ve seen the Ultraprints will know what I mean; if not, you can get a fair idea from the testimonials below.
The image will be printed in a limited edition of 10, never to be printed again, at 20×30″ printed area on Permajet Portrait White matte cotton rag; we’ve found this holds detail better than the previous Canson Platine Fiber Rag Baryta we used, whilst being easier to view in larger sizes due to the matte surface and better reflection control (not to mention a complete lack of baryta dust, of course). Wesley Wong at Giclee Art will handle the printing.
Thank you in advance. Please click here to order.
Selected customer testimonials on previous Ultraprint editions
Gerner Christensen: With suitable presence of anxiety I opened the roll this morning. What a moment !!! To see this fantastic photo, to see this fantastic print art, this paper quality, to enter into the fantastic detailed and still silky soft universe of pure eye-bliss, yes it all took me away to dreamland. It is an exquisite pleasure all through to dwell with this photo presented in this ultimate way, I couldn’t get my eyes of it. Showing my wife having fetched a loupe to dive in further, we both got lost in time and space. It took 1/2 hour just to think about anything else. Amazing Ming. Now I am not sure, or am I, if anybody else, except of course those I know are taken by the experience themselves, would get such an ecstatic feel looking at this photo in Ultraprinted, but I am obsessed by the perfection this printed image really is. To view such a photo/print makes standard hi-rez prints look poor and uninteresting. Yes I even think I prefer the Ultraprint over a projected diapositive when it’s best. Thank you Ming making these type of prints available and please do not tempt me over the line to fill up all walls with your art 🙂
Praneeth Rajsingh: I received my copy of the Fog, Vienna today. I am really happy with the print. I placed the Ultraprint and another print of mine from Wesley side by side and the differences were as clear as night and day. Though this particular picture is different from the New Zealand series, the tree to the left of the frame really stood out for me and the detail was impeccable. Planning to get a loupe like you suggested on your certificate of authenticity and see what I can find then.
David Kimmel: I’ve followed all of the posts documenting the development of the ultra prints from the beginning but you truly cannot appreciate what they are and their importance until they are experienced in person. In that way, you have an uphill battle marketing them. I am very interested in purchasing a print. I think it will do 3 things: provide me with a reminder of what I learned in MOI, it will also provide me with an example of what to strive for technically and artistically, but most importantly it will be a beautiful piece of art to add to my home. The hard part is selecting an image. I absolutely loved ‘Matcha’ not only for the beautiful colours but the way it transports the viewer to a Japanese cafe (is that indeed where it was taken?). The other image that stands on in my mind is one of the landscapes from New Zealand of a lake whose name escapes me. I remember the beautiful subtle earth tones and the small isolated lake in the foreground on the right.
Christian Tekath: Just wanted to drop you a quick thank you for the excellent print/photo, which arrived in perfect condition on Monday. If you ever consider a workshop in Germany, let me know! 😉
Jan Martin: What a nice surprise. It is beautiful! It is perfect. It is my inspiration! This and the Swan are my two favorite photos of yours. It is going on the wall directly in front of my desk. I can’t wait to figure out how to frame it — any suggestions of what might be best? Do I need special archival mat boards, etc? The packaging was perfect — nary a dent — so I hope this worked for all your customers. I took the print to the best local framer I could find and I must say, he was very impressed with the image and the printing. He took out his magnifying glass to examine, and spent a lot of time thinking about framing options. We opted for matting (otherwise it’s against the glass and that didn’t seem right!) and a thin black frame. I didn’t do a dry mount because that also seemed damaging, so we are doing photo corners and I hope that will work well enough. If not, I can always have it dry mounted later. You guys rock!
Andre Yew: I got the Ultraprints today, and they are amazing! Anyway, the detail and tonality look great. I especially like the highlights off the tree trunks in the color picture. I feel like the paper’s texture almost detracts from the detail because it can get in the way of the actual detail. I also have to be careful with my light source so the specular reflection of the light doesn’t obscure detail. Looking at it through a 4x loupe, I feel like I could zoom in forever and still see more detail. It’s certainly a unique and special offering that no one else is even attempting, so it’s very valuable for that alone, despite the many other considerable qualities of the prints. Thanks for offering it again, and I for one hope you don’t get the Pentax, because I wouldn’t know what to do with bigger Ultraprints!
Marcos Hatada – Just received the ultraprints. They are incredible! So unbelievably beautiful!!
Harsh Agrawal: Forest II is the finest print I have ever laid my eyes on in my entire life. My vocabulary doesn’t have enough superlatives to qualify or quantify the magnificence of this art piece. It is beyond stunning.
Matthias Gaiser: The Ultraprint has arrived – and it’s everything I expected it to be. In fact, I’ll have to rearrange the pictures on my walls to make room for it in order to appreciate it fully, i.e. it’ll get the best spot available! Wonderful work – in all respects! Thank you both very, very much!
Bob Prangnell: Received the Ultraprint – very nice thank you. Beautiful colors and amazing detail and 3-d effect. I said to my wife that I could lock you in a bathroom and you’d come out with a dozen great shots – and you proved that today with “Towel”
Junaid Rahim: Very nice prints Ming, really enjoying them. Looking at forest II I kind of rue not getting the bigger prints for the tokyo set. But the colours are lovely and definitely some lovely detail in them. I think Forest II will have to be framed. Forest II is one of those shots that really grows on you with time as you start seeing more and more detail in it. So happy at least that one is the more ‘native’ size!
Junaid Rahim (second print): Finally got the print in my hand! A few things to let you know – the packaging was much better this time with the harder back to prevent bending, so please continue with this! Also has something changed with the printing process from last time? From my own eye, I perceive the print quality to be a bit better or is it simply down to the tonality of the colours being different from the Cuba pics vs the autumn in tokyo ones?
Very happy again and look forward to getting one from the 645Z – hope you put a run out Ming after your New Zealand trip!
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Limited edition Ultraprints of these images and others are available from mingthein.gallery
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Ming Thein | Photographer 
Well done Ming! Wish I could have been there. The light is gorgeous.
And 100% represented in print 🙂 the web version is of course nowhere close…
Just incredible.
I’m compelled to inquire about the manual control points. Does letting your stitching program automatically create control points leave visible artifacts that manual placement improves upon? Are you manually correcting for parallax induced errors?
With fractal subjects that have a lot of similar high-frequency detail, the stitching program can’t find a match or makes mistakes – the more resolution, the worse this is (one window or one branch looks much like another). I try to avoid doing it manually, but sometimes you have no choice…
No parallax correction (I presume you mean vertical convergence of buildings) – the camera/lens was flat.
Maybe he meant paralax that occurs when you rotate the Camera around another point than the lens focal point, which changes the viewpoint of the lens, thus changing the respective location of foreground and background.
If this is the case, there should not be any paralax to correct, if you rotated the camera-lens assembly around the correct point (which I am sure you did 🙂 )
Yes I did.
Alexander is correct. Do you have a pano head to recommend?
I use the Arca Swiss Cube.
Thanks Ming, I hadn’t thought of that one. Do you need a long camera mounting plate, aligned with the lens, to arrive at the nodal point pivot?
Frame this print, put it on your wall and you will be sucked in like it was a wide open window wieving the scene live!
Of course I haven’t seen this one with my own eyes, but judged from the UP’s I already have there’s no doubt in my mind this one will blow the hat off.
Having had the pleasure to see and to own some of these amazing Ultraprints, I can only imagine the immersiveness of a scene like this printed at that scale. As you say, like looking at the scene, rather than a photograph of the scene. As I learned with Forest III, the postcard on a computer screen requires something of a leap of faith. I’m sure Nob Hill is going to wow those who see it.
Thanks Linden. I wanted to bring it this time but didn’t have room for another poster tube.