Digital BW, The Print

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> These were taken with an APS-C camera with a good zoom lens.  No tripod, but a shutter speed near 1/1000 and f/8.  ISO 800 or less. 
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Try shooting with the enlargement in mind. Crop in the camera so you don't have to discard pixels.  Low ISO (eg 100) means less noise so there is no need to perform noise reduction. But it may mean a slower shutter speed and a tripod. Make conscious decisions about DOF.  I stopped using 1A filters on lenses and that helped with quality.  Shooting with RAW makes a huge difference because a RAW file run through raw conversion is more tolerant (within limits) of pixel-pushing without showing artifacts in the enlarged print.  In general, printing large with a file captured with a APS-C sensor means you need to be more conscious of all the small details.   The mistakes and imperfections get enlarged too.  But personally, I enjoy large prints even if they are more challenging.