[filmscanners] Re: Pixels and Prints

["Arthur Entlich" <artistic-1@shaw.ca>]

David J. Littleboy wrote:


> The question is what the cutoff point is. It looks to me that 35mm film is
> worth about 9MP, not 24MP. Most people comparing the 1Ds to 35mm film find
> the 1Ds winning hands down. There is a question as to how much more
> information a 5080 dpi scanner gets out of a 35mm frame than a 4000 dpi
> scanner. I suspect that it's not enough of a difference to be significant.
> (None of the Minolta 5400 scans of actual images I've seen showed
> significant improvement over 4000 dpi scans, although the test chart images
> look a lot better.)
>
> David J. Littleboy
> davidjl@gol.com
> Tokyo, Japan
>

I think this is probably true, due to the "cutoff" of the human eye and
brain.  Basically, for the size of prints most people produce, there
probably isn't much to be gained by going above 4000 ppi scans, although
I can see what's missing in a 4000 ppi scan versus the original image
looked over with a loupe.

However, I'd like to see what happens with a four foot wide poster print
from a 35mm film scan (with a drum scanner) and a 9 MP digital image.

The problem with the digicam image is that at the point that pixels
become visible, then our eye starts to object due to the recognizable
sharp and gridlike pixel edges.  At that point, film grain (dye clouds)
becomes more acceptable, because it is analog (random placement, size
and overlap) which our eyes find more pleasing. Our world is full of
analog visual "noise", even our eyes produce it, so we learn to ignore
it, but sharp edged square cornered patches of color are pretty obvious
to us.  It is the reason camouflage works so well, our eyes and brain
don't register ill-defined edges of similar colors well.

Art


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