John Morton wrote:
> .......
>
> I am new to this list but, I am going to go way out on a limb and say what
> I've been thinking for years: the primary factor weighing in favor of digital
> photography is its convenience, and this has outweighed all other
> considerations. This isn't just a general consumer preference, but a trend
> started by busy professionals who are seeing their images printed through 85
> lpi screens on a daily basis anyway - and who very much like not having to
> develop/dry/scan negatives to get a working digital image.
>
I'm sure that's a factor in the marketplace, but not for me. I do
photography for myself and the final result is my primary measure of
equipment. When I got my first DSLR, I did some shooting with both and
some close comparisons of the results. This was practical testing, for
my own use, so I just used film I would have used anyway, not the
slowest, finest grain, etc.
From my results, I concluded that it was just about a toss-up between
film and the 6.1 mp 300D. Smooth, continuous tone areas like sky were
much better in digital, as were nuances in
clouds.http://www.moosemystic.net/Gallery/FilmvsDigi/FvD01.htm
On the other hand, fine detail, especially complex detail was rendered
slightly more accurately on film, albeit with a lot of grain.
http://www.moosemystic.net/Gallery/FilmvsDigi/FvD02.htm
Since I got the 5D, there is no comparison on issues of detail
resolution and noise, film loses. I'm leaving aside here issues of
"look" color qualities, etc.
>
> I was a member of a Yahoo "Digital Darkroom" group for a while, but quit
> because it was becoming apparent that one of the main posters was an Epson
> shill who was there to impress digital newbies with his skill - and recommend
> Epson products with every second breath. One of his mantras was "Well you can
> only see a difference if you are looking at it through a magnifying glass -
> at normal viewing distances there is no difference".
>
Just because a yahoo says it, doesn't mean it isn't true. HP, Epson and
Canon all make high end inkjet printers that need no excuse about how
close you look at the print.
>
> Myself, I always look at photos from a few inches away, regardless of their
> size.
As do I, and the vision in my myopic right eye, which conveniently
focuses at about 4 inches without glasses, has 20/10 acuity. I just took
a look at a recent 8x10 print from the R1800 with a loupe. I can see the
film grain, but no ink drop pattern.
> I have a very nice color laser printer that I greatly prefer to any inkjet
> output I've ever seen: I always look at my output from a few inches away. But
> of course, there is always that "Easy is good enough" thing going on in
> general: inkjetting onto watercolor paper, for instance, so that a lack of
> clarity and resolution in display prints can be attributed to 'artistic
> interpretation'.
>
We must live in different universes. Current high end inkjets are
capable, depending on quality of source image, of course, of absolutely
top quality photographic images, at least the equal of the best that
ever came out of a wet darkroom. In galleries, the issue for fine art
prints (and on high gloss paper too, not watercolor paper) is between
traditional wet prints and inkjet prints (or, as the expensive ones are
called, giclée). It was quite amusing to visit two galleries in the same
strip of shops, one selling both kinds of prints and the other selling
only pure analog prints. There was some stunning work in both places -
and some stuff with, to my mind, less than sterling image quality in both.
Nowhere do I see color laser used for the highest quality photographic
work.
>
> Still, it looks like digital is catching up to film: I use a Minolta DiMAGE
> 5400 digital film scanner, and it produces beautiful images; but the
> interference patterns which form from the way that any scanners' chip
> interacts with film, and that appear as pseudo-grain in the scans,
A bit general there... Grain aliasing, as it is called, is a factor of
the average frequency of the grain and the frequency of the scan, so it
varies with scanner and film. It is also affected by the nature of the
light source, with diffuse sources giving less problems. I think some
one may have made a diffuser for the 5400?
> most definitely limits the degree of practical enlargement... and does so in
> a way that does not affect the grainless pixel-based direct capture of
> digital images.
>
I haven't run into this with either my 2700 or 4000 dpi film scanners,
but I have done little B&W scanning.
>
> I do wonder sometimes, though, if the inherent shortcomings of inkjet
> printers made it easier for camera manufacturers to promote products that
> created less-than-stellar digital imaging... and if all of our standards of
> image quality were (hopefully, temporarily) lowered during the early days of
> digital imaging - and lowered just for the sake of 'convenience'.
Personally, I simply disagree. My digital darkroom and inkjet printer,
both scanned film and digital capture, allow me to produce better prints
than I could ever buy, let alone do myself. Suddenly, I can make prints
that are at least the equal of a friend who is a master Ciba/Ilfo-chrome
printer who sells hundreds of his prints a year. Whatever "inherent
shortcomings of inkjet printers" you may have encountered are either
cheap printers or old printers.
B&W printing is, I gather, still a chancier business, but the latest
high end printers are very close to wet dark room work according to some
testers. Take a look at Victor's tests at
http://www.photo-i.co.uk/Reviews/printers_page.htm
Moose
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