Digital BW, The Print

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "Ernst Dinkla" 
<E.Dinkla@c...> wrote:

> The people that are using digital Canon D1's, Sinar backs on
> Sinars and Hasselblads write that few of their old lenses can
> cope with the quality of the sensors.

Some of us got into photography from the technical side such as 
science and engineering. (I started off doing astrophotography and 
eventually graduated to other subjects such as studio nudes)   Other 
photographers started off as art majors.

You can tell which are which by who can do the math.   

Fine grain film can resolve 80 lp/mm (or better - Panatomic-X could 
easily do over 100 lp/mm).   So do the math.   It takes (a MINIMUM 
of) two pixels to resolve a line-pair.  So a 36x36mm sensor such as 
the type used in MF photography would need to have 160 elements/mm to 
resolve 80 lp/mm.  That would be over 33 MP.    Sinar's best is 22 MP 
and it's 36x49mm, which means it's even lower-res than what I used in 
the above example.

So get over it: digital sensors are NOT as sharp as film.   Actually 
digital sensors are even worse than the above math suggests because 
of the need for bayesian reconstruction.   The color resolution is 
even lower than the luminance resolution.

The reason why art major MF photographers say that their digital 
backs are so good that they exceed the capabilities of their lenses 
is psychological:  they need to justify the astronomical amounts of 
MONEY those backs cost.   If it cost that much money its resolution  
must be incredibly, phenomenally, supercalifragilistically 
stupendous!