Digital BW, The Print

Based on posts from the Epson 7000 users (George, Ron, Nij), 
resolution discussion on Phil Bard's LVT work, and some observations 
of my own, I have some questions about final print size using digital 
methods verses traditional enlargement.

First of all the amount of enlargement and the acceptable sharpness 
has a great deal of personal taste involved. For myself I have been 
extremely conservative in the darkroom over the last decade. I once 
routinely printed 35mm on 11X14 and occasionally 16X20. As I moved 
more into 4X5 view camera work I now only print 35mm up to 8X10, my 
6cmX7cm negs at 11X14. The 4X5 has stayed on 11X14 paper due to lack 
of darkroom space but from other peoples work I would be comfortable 
up to 20X24. Beyond that and I start to think of 5X7 and 8X10 negs.

Now the impression I have gotten from digital is that there is a loss 
of resolution and sharpness in the process of scanning. This led me 
to believe that I would need to print slightly smaller. However, when 
I got my first film scanner (Polaroid 4000) I was making a print from 
35mm on 8.5X11 paper which was looking good and I didn't see any 
sharpness loss compared to a traditional silver print from the same 
neg.

On a whim I stuck a sheet of 13X19 paper in my 1200. The results were 
astounding! I would not have believed there was that much detail in 
the negative or that the print would look that good. Granted if it 
had been a 4x5 neg to start with it would have been even better but 
my impression was that is was better than what I would expect to get 
from a silver print of the same size.

While there may be loss of sharpness/resolution between the original 
negative and the scan, there seems to be little loss between scan and 
final print. My thought is that the total loss in sharpness in the 
negative-to-scanner-to-printer process may be less than the loss in 
the negative-enlarger-silver paper process.

If I am correct, please jump in here with you opinions. This would be 
another significant reason to make the digital switch in addition to 
the wonders of Photoshop and getting out of the darkroom.

This would also suggest that if your final output for your digital 
file will be silver gelatin,  a neg-scan-digital printer-contact neg-
silver paper might offer better sharpness over a neg-scan-digital 
printer-enlarging neg-enlarger-silver paper.

Does any of this sound reasonable?

Martin