Digital BW, The Print

claudej1@... writes:

> Years ago, I did some scans of MF and 35mm film at various resolutions.  When
> it came to deriving fine detail, the law of diminshing returns started to
> set in aft about 1,200 PPI and definitely 2,000 PPI was the overkill point for
> realizable, printable, viewable information.

Nowadays, you can still extract additional detail from film even going
from 5000 to 6000 ppi, although each increment in scanning resolution
does indeed bring a smaller increment in useful detail.

> 35mm is the bottom of the barrel for image quality for ovbious reasons
> and no amount of scanner resolution ((or taking lens resoution) can
> make up for lack of square inches.

Incidentally, this same rule holds for electronic sensors.