Amen. Reichman's exact words are "... Grain particles are binary. An
individual film grain can only be either black or not-black, on or off,
exposed or not exposed. Sort of a binary device."
This was followed shortly by: "... it takes a clump of between 30-40
grains of film to represent a full tonal range, (similar in concept to
the dithering done by inkjet printers to produce continious tones)..."
Interpretations of these 30-40 grain "bits" entering into binary numeric
combinations I think are only to be found on this list and not in
Reichman's words. Quite to the contrary, he states that it is similar
to dithering.
So I prefer to accept his explanation as is. Especially since it agrees
with what I see with my eyes which is that fairly low resolution digital
looks better to me than supposedly higher resolution film.
Chuck Norcutt
Winsor Crosby wrote:
> I think Reichmann's point was that even though grain is about half
> the size of pixel sites it is either black or white. He said you need
> a little group of grains to make gray and that clump is bigger than a
> pixel which can be several thousand shades of gray in its discrete
> little self. I think he was trying to show why comparisons that use
> black and white resolution charts give an advantage to film that is
> not reflected in real world photography. Thought provoking stuff.
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