Digital BW, The Print

Matt, the simplest approach is just to think of your final print size.
Suppose you have a 4x5 neg and you want to make an uncropped print that is
10 x 12.5", at 300 dpi print size.  That is 10" x 300 = 3,000 pixels on the
short side.  So, 3,000 pixels / 4" for the neg = a scan at 750 dpi on the
Epson scanner.  Once I'd gone to the trouble to scan, I'd probably just scan
at 1200 ppi so I could have a bigger digital neg in case I needed it later.
That is only a 55mb 16-bit grayscale file.  Once you decide the crop you
want, in the scanner, you can use the same formula to scan.  Also you should
find out what the optical resolution of the Epson scanner is without any
interpolation and use that as the maximum ppi of which the scanner is
capable.  My Lino scanner for 8x10" and smaller film has some outrageous max
ppi number, but it's optical resolution is only 1200 ppi.  If I need to res
up a little for a print I'll use Genuine Fractals or stair-step
interpolation in PS, not the scanner interpolation. 

Regards,

  --Ken Carney
    www.kencarney.com 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Matthew Wensing [mailto:wensing@...] 
> Sent: Thursday, December 02, 2004 7:32 AM
> To: DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com
> Subject: Re: [Digital BW] Computing power
> 
> 
> Because I'm the new guy that just got his Epson 4870 but 
> hasn't yet done enough reading to really know what he does 
> and doesn't need out of it.  :)