Digital BW, The Print

Hi,

You raise some big issues...

A number of photographers believe D30 / Fuji S1 / D1X etc output 
matches the quality of a scanned 35mm transparency. Michael Reichmann 
of the Luminous Landscape, who uses a D30, is one well known 
subscriber to this view. 

I shoot with an S1 (and other stuff), and in my opinion, for some 
subjects it is considerably *better* than film - portraits being the 
best example - and that includes conversion to B&W.  I prefer the S1 
to scanned medium format film for portraits.  I think, however it is 
a more difficult choice with landscape or architecture above A4 
size.  You don't say what you shoot, so it is difficult to advise. 

It is a personal choice, influenced by subject matter.  I simply find 
I get the medium format kit out much less often now that I own an 
S1.  However, I still use 5x4...

Loads of people still shoot film, and will do for some time to come.  
I prefer to shoot digitally wherever possible.  Genuine Fractals is a 
good way to interpolate up, but there is an almost as good 
alternative, called stair interpolation (simply a Photoshop action to 
increase an image size in multiple stages).  Also try out Lanczos 
interpolation that comes with Qimage (there is a trial version - 
superb program).

You should get very good results with the D30.
--
Quentin

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@y..., "steven0356" <stevenr@m...> 
wrote:
> I am planning to shoot with my Canon D-30, which will give me a
> 8-bit,  
> 17 meg file if I save it as a raw file in the camera.   If needed, 
I 
> will use Genuine Fractals to interpolate the file size up.  Does 
any 
> one see a problem with this approach?
> 
> Does any one shoot digitally or are most people still shooting 
film? 
> 
> How does a digital image compare to a scanned neg. in print quality?
> 
>  Is Genuine Fractals the best  way interpolate a digital file?