Digital BW, The Print

Peter,

You are absolutely correct. All the "I did this with film and digital 
and compared them and found.........." suffer the same fundamental flaw. 
There is no ground truth in the test. If you must test film against 
digital, you must test each against a calibrated standard using 
calibrated instrumentation. The test must be performed using good test 
procedures and the results must be repeatable to have any meaning at 
all. I've not seen this.

We know from the arithmetic the maximum lines/mm a digital sensor is 
capable and we know from the bench test the limits on good lenses and 
the good lenses are better than the best current crop of digital sensors.

How it appears to the eye is a different story and if someone prefers 
the "digital look" over the film look that a matter of personal 
perception and not an issue of technical specifications. In a lot of 
respects the Tmax films are probably technically superior to good old 
TriX ( needs to be proved to me however) but I sure prefer good old TriX.



Peter Nelson wrote:

>--- 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!    
>
>
>
>
>
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