Tony wrote:
>My personal quality stance is that without special care, most 35mm images
>neither deserve nor well sustain enlargement beyond 15x10 by any route
>unless unusually large viewing distances are involved, and I most often
>print at A4. I like 'sharp' but don't much like grain in most images, and
>4,000ppi doesn't leave me with any grief for whatever it misses - but nor
>did 2,700. However I value more the smoother tonality of 4000ppi than the
>minor increase in sharpness of fine detail. I guess I'm trying to say that
> what is 'enough' is individual, depends on what you want to do with it,
>and how absolutist your dedication to every last lppm.
Atlthough this isn't what Tony's writing about, I'm going to "kidnap" his
thoughts on this to revisit what I said a few days ago, re flatbed scans vs.
filmscans, vis a vis resolution and detail. A year ago I had the priveledge
and oportunity to flatbed-scan a series of pictures (prints) made 130 years
ago with cherry-wood cameras and very slow anastigmat lenses on (probably)
glass wet-plates, printed on a size-for-size format. The detail was
incredible!
I now have the oportunity to scan modern color prints made with several
smaller-format 35mm &tc cameras, two of which I closely know the lensatic
performance of. The comparisson suffers. The old, slower lenses show their
"stuff," and the smaller format tends to drop some of the detail. This leads
me to think that the lensatics and medium of the target picture is *still*
more important than whatever scanner you use, if the scanner is compentent
in the first place. It drives me up the wall every day, but "c'est la
guerre"--that's how it is. OTOH, it wouldn't have been practical to do a
3-minute pose when my daughter was playing basketball. ;-)
Best regards--LRA
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