Digital BW, The Print

Hi Mike,

> Herb, Austin, et. al.
>
> I just got off of the phone with Tom McCartney. Tom is a
> co-author of "The Digital Zone System". Gordon Brown was one of
> the Kodak r&d engineers for T-Max 100. Tom and I discussed
> Austins assertion and re-read his opinion. It appears that Austin
> is equating the film grains with pixels to get to the 100
> megapixel number.

I don't know that you could have given him "all" my assertions ;-)

Actually, that is only one way at arriving at that number.  It is entirely
valid, since a grain IS the unit of tonality recording...but actually, even
the 100M number does not come close to equating with film grain, since film
grain is essentially random in nature, therefore not having the axial
effects that digital sensors have.

The other method I used was taking 40 lp/mm and extrapolating from
there...and it comes out to around 80M using that method.

> We feel that this is just not correct. Pixels
> and grain should not be equated as such. I am not an engineer and
> this stuff is greek to me.

Well, I am (as well as having been in this industry for 25 years), and it's
perfectly clear to me ;-)

> All I know is that my D1x is incredible.

No doubt about it!

Austin