Digital BW, The Print

Hi Anthony,

> > The adjustment called "analog gain" does not
> > allow you to adjust the actual analog gain of
> > the CCD/CCD front end.  It allows you to adjust
> > the exposure time.
>
> I was wondering about that myself.  NikonScan calls it "analog gain," but
> since exposure time seems to be the usual way of doing things, I was
> wondering why or if the Nikon scanners did it the same way.

Yes, Nikon is the culprit here...

> I prefer extending the exposure time to trying to boost the gain,
> although I
> suppose longer exposure time increases noise, too (but hopefully
> to a lesser
> extent).

Agreed.  I'm not sure that moving the image data around in the "histogram"
(in other words, in the range of the scanner data) does anything, but shift
the data...I don't know that you actually get more data.  The example that
Allesandro gave would say that it did, but I'm not sure his numbers match
reality, even though on initial thought they appear to, and his speculation
might very well make sense.  I thought this through a while ago, and I don't
remember what I concluded.  Guess I'll have to think it through again.

Regards,

Austin