Digital BW, The Print

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Carolyn Frayn" <carolynfrayn@...>
To: <digitalblackandwhitetheprint@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Friday, May 30, 2003 6:51 AM
Subject: Re: [Digital BW] Any New Film Scanners Coming?


> Hi Martin..
>
> >
> > Supposedly B&W films resolve to a dpi equivalence of 3000 to 7000 dpi.
> > I
> > imagine that in real world situations you have much less than that by
> > the
> > time you take into account optical issues when you shoot. Some people
> > suggest that about 2500 dpi true optical resolution would be plenty
> > for B&W
> > film scanning. So a true 4000 dpi scanner should really do the job.
>
> When you shoot color, or color for B&W and B&W, and require very good
> scans for all, how does that change the specs for sampling resolutions?

Theoretically color neg films are lower resolution and therefore less
demanding. Color neg and chromogenic B&W films are reported to have
resolutions of 1300 to 3000 and color slide film is 2000 to 6000. So the
requirement for color slide are about the same as B&W.
>
> >
(snip)
> >
> > The Aztek Premier drum scanner gives an optical resolution of over
> > 7000 dpi
> > from an 8000 dpi scan so you wouldn't lose a bit of information on the
> > film.
> > Not quite sure how you would handle files that big though.
>
> I play with 1.5 gig PS files, though layers and layers of course, not a
> flattened image file size. PS has a size limit of 2.51 GIG's. So even a
> Scanmate 11k  would fit in nicely... I've been reading about people
> seeing a big difference in those huge scans of 35mm, so how can it be
> said with completely certainty that what we have now is near the limit
> for desktop CCD's and the quality of the scans won't improve with
> higher res etc. I'm just curious... and I don't have your engineering
> degrees so forgive me for being naive in this respect.

Ouch! I have a tough time working with anything over 0.5 or 0.6 GB.

It is hard to judge the differences people see and how they evaluate it. A
lot may have to do with what they are going from and to. Maybe they don't
scan particularly well themselve but when they send it out for that big drum
scan the operator does a better job. Or perhaps the drum operator or
software did a bit of sharpening making a side by side comparison seem much
more different than it really is. No good answer to that.

No degrees in scanning or electronics here. It certainly makes sense to
pursue scanner resolution up to and probably a bit past the highest
resolution of the film, say 7000 dpi, just so you have the option to capture
everything off the best piece of film. Beyond that you are not gaining
anymore info just making larger files. Hopefully the tech will advance and
prices fall, making this possible.

Martin