Digital BW, The Print

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.
 
8x10 film format gave use about 60 times the surface  area of 35mm, 4x5: 18, 
and MF about 3-5. The reason was for grainless prints as  much as resolution. 
Since 8x10 uses the same "fuzzy lenses" as 4x5, it's  pointless to scan at a 
greater resolution than 4x5 because the sharpness is  realized by more square 
inches of film. 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.
 
Claude


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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.