At 13:45 8/27/01, Ken Norton wrote:
I wasn't talking about the compositions or subject. It is the
slight lack of sharpness that was getting me. Perfectly
adequate for 8x10, but without sharpening in an editor, not
going to hold up well enough in 11x14. I'd like to see a "Gary
Reese" lens test on the digitals.
Ken
I believe the super-duper very high upper crust end of digital can
get 8x10's using their highest possible resolution, but 11x14's are
too much of a stretch, especially compared to what you can get from
medium format, even a 645. There are very sophisticated algorithms
now to increase resolution for printing, but regardless of how
sophisticated the mathematics are (including the fractal stuff) they
cannot add details from the original scene that are not in the
original digital file.
IMO the acceptability of large 11x14 prints from digital cameras is
resulting from the "dumbing down of the herd of the average viewers"
who are now accustomed to the softness of low resolution television,
nearly as low resolution and grainy computer screens, and have never
seen what can be done with film, especially 120/220, if it's done
correctly (not APS from a 1-hour drugstore lab). Hang an 11x14 from
a digital camera next to an 11x14 print from medium format shot and
printed properly, and there should be a visible difference between
them at close viewing.
-- John
John,
I agree if you bring 645 into the mix and is optically printed, but
there is something going on with perception that I do not understand.
It looks like digital image processing is replacing optical/chemical
printing. You would think that a high quality piece of film of 35mm,
or even 645 scanned at the same resolution as an image recorded
digitally by a CCD would look the same, but the CCD image usually
looks better. Scanned film file sizes seem to be much larger than
equivalent appearing images taken with a CCD.
I am not sure what that is about. Since you can continue to see
subtle improvements increasing resolution of scanned film from
4000dpi to 10000dpi I thought it would be a long time until digital
cams could stand beside film cameras, but now with this apparent
acceptance of the eye for printed CCD images I am not so sure.
Winsor
--
Winsor Crosby
Long Beach, California
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