Digital BW, The Print

Bob Frost writes:

> Resolution of what? From the data I have seen, sensor resolution in cameras
> such as the D2X and IDsII are equal or superior to 35mm Velvia in 
> resolution.

I believe what I see, rather than what I read, and digital doesn't even
come close.  Shooting B&W digitally is doubly bizarre, since not only do
you sacrifice resolution, but you sacrifce tonality as well.

> We don't yet have sensors comparable to the larger sizes of
> film, but that is just a matter of size, not resolution, surely.

Sufficiently large sensors would have lots of pixels, yes, but nobody
knows how to make those.  And you cannot just make pixels smaller,
because the noise goes up and the quality of each pixel declines
rapidly.  In the final analysis, for both film and digital, the size of
the imaging plane makes all the difference.