Digital BW, The Print

Jerry,

> James, assuming you know how to process and sharpen it to its maximum
> quality, I'd say about 14x20 inches, or so would equal any iso 100 film.

As you can well imagine, I dispute that...

> This camera
> could certainly replace MOST of your film camera shooting. (Unless you
> are talking 4x5 or larger negs).

And I'd say most any MF camera will provide higher quality images, not
simply 4x5.

>
> The D30 could make a 12x18 of a closeup of a cat that was sharper than
> film...

Does that include scanned film, that is also sharpened???

> Medium Format is another story. How sharp are the medium format lenses?
> How good is your scanner? How picky are you? I'm obsessed with
> sharpness, so I demand a SHARP print.

You can sharpen scanned images too...and if comparing sharpness, you really
need to compare UNSHARPENED raw images (if the camera can be made to do so)
with film directly to determine which is sharper natively.  Of course, it's
not really "fair" to compare a sharpened digital camera image with an
unsharpened film image, but I have no problem comparing my unsharpened
Leafscan scanned Hasselblad images with any digital camera images...they are
more than comparable in the sharpness arena, and far better in the detail
and tonality arena.

> I don't think its up to medium format Hasselblad at 4000 DPI for 16x20
> inch prints,

Nor is it up to a 2540 Hasselblad image at 16 x 20 ;-)

> as it will probably take 12 megapixels to do that.

I'd say a lot more than that...

> ...you could easily get a 3x5 foot print from the D60 that
> would be tack sharp at that distance.

As I've said a hundred times, sharpness is NOT a property of the number of
pixels/sensors at all.  You can get a tack sharp image from a two pixel
sensor...

Regards,

Austin