Digital BW, The Print

Bo raises an interesting point regarding grain.

Of course there is a school of thought that says that grain in an image is a
'Bad Thing'. I personally don't mind - there are images where grain feels
'right' to me, and others that do not.

BUT, in my limited experience, the absence of grain in a scan will ease
certain operations on the file. A grain-free file seems to me to be more
easily resizeable.

Conversely, when the scan shows the grain, that grain prints very
differently (it seems to me) at different output sizes. Similarly, that
grain could well cause problems during resize / interpolate operations. I
suspect (but have not done any tests to check this) that working from
'grainy' negs one might be better to scan for purpose, rather than scan-once
for multi-use.

This then leads me to suspect that the popularity of digital capture has
been partially driven by the relative 'problems' of grain in scans, that the
scan itself is often a 'noisy' process (particularly with low to mid-range
film scanners). If you then add in a digital output method that is visibly
'dotty' (as opposed to one that is potentially, not dotty) then I believe
that you have quite a lot of factors stacked on top of each other.  This
could also account for the discussions recently regarding the use of
large-format equipment *that enable grain-free scans to be achieved easily*.

I suspect that, just as sharpening can be done to a mathematical model to
decide how much effect for a given output size, it should also be possible
to do something similar for grain effects. My understanding of similar
processes in the darkroom (and ignoring for a moment processes like lith
processes that can emphasize grain) the paper's resolution is high enough to
render grain sharply from a neg at any but the smallest(?) enlargements. Of
course, at great enlargements, the grain may be 'too large' to be
pleasurable to view... but my point is that the output medium was sharp
enough to render it accurately.

Conversely, and taking an extreme example, the dotty output of an Epson
black-only print is NOT sharp enough to render grain sharply and accurately
at just about any resolution. But perhaps through this example we can see
that the output technology is as important a factor as any in the chain.

So Bo, your humour is taken regarding dot-free output... but grain, noise
and dots are all relevent in our little digital world and each brings it's
own little issues ;)

This is mostly guess-work and gut feeling on my part... I'd welcome thoughts
from others!

nij


Nigel Rheam
MWORDS Limited   www.mwords.co.uk   Digital Fine Art