Although this may not be profoundly elucidating, perhaps not even particularly
relevant, I think it relates to the practical rather than the theoretical
aspect of this notion, so I'll offer it anyhow. A while back, during a
discussion about film resolution and old lenses, I posted as an example an
ordinary shot I made in the early '60s, hand-held, actually out a car window,
with a Pentax and f/1.8 Takumar lens on the now regrettably extinct Panatomic-X
film, together with a crop of a tiny part of the same picture. The shot is of
Ayers Hall, one of the oldest buildings on the University of Tennessee campus,
and the crop is of a part of the bell tower, showing that there was a
loudspeaker hiding in the shadows. The scan of the negative was at 5400 dpi,
and while it doesn't show the grain as clearly as a darkroom grain magnifier, I
think it's probably sufficient to make my point.
Here's the full shot:
http://home.att.net/~hiwayman/wsb/media/192375/site1094.jpg
Here's the crop:
http://home.att.net/~hiwayman/wsb/media/192375/site1095.jpg
My point: looks like a lot of shades of gray to me. And having used a grain
magnifier to focus in the darkroom on many an occasion, I don't recall it
looking much different. If you look close enough and get down to the micron
level, maybe it really is all black and white, but from a practical standpoint,
as in making photographs, don't black and white make shades of gray?
Walt
--
"Anything more than 500 yards from
the car just isn't photogenic." --
Edward Weston
-------------- Original message ----------------------
From: Winsor Crosby <wincros@xxxxxxxxxxx>
>
> I rather like Reichmann's explanation, but I was surprised when I
> passed it on to a friend who asked whether he had ever looked through
> a grain magnifier. He said that grain is all shades of gray. My
> darkroom work was only for a few months, in spare time, many years
> ago, but I have no memory of either black or white for film grain
> although the focusing magnifier probably did not produce an image of
> the actual grain.
>
> The only thing I could find on the web was a brief explanation which
> showed an illustration of a huge film grain crystal with a single
> molecule making up the structure of the crystal being changed by a
> photon. That would seem to indicate that a grain crystal could be any
> level of gray depending on how many molecules were transformed by
> light. Reichmann's argument depends completely on the on-off digital
> state of a grain crystal. Does anyone know the answer?
>
> A side note is that while I was googling for an explanation I was
> amazed how commercial enterprise seems to have pushed internet
> information way into the background.
>
>
>
> Winsor
> Long Beach, California, USA
>
> >
> > I am not trying to be right I am trying to make people think -
> > thats my
> > real job.
>
==============================================
List usage info: http://www.zuikoholic.com
List nannies: olympusadmin@xxxxxxxxxx
==============================================
|
