Re: filmscanners: RE: filmscanners: Pixels per inch vs DPI

["Rob Geraghty" <harper@wordweb.com>]

"SKID Photography" <skid@bway.net> wrote:
> I think it's important to remember that film grain and pixels are not
> interchangeable terms.

I didn't mean to imply that they were.  I was simply trying to make an
analogy
about expected viewing distance.

> I think that part of it, is that pixels are aligned in a grid and have a
rectilinear
> shape, whereas the film grain is (for lack of a better description)
schoastic in
> arrangement and irregular in shape, thereby providing more tonal
information than pixels.

I don't see why stochastic or random dye clouds inherently provides more
information
than a pixel.  A single pixel can represent one of 16 million colours (more
or less
depending on your bit depth).  A single dye cloud can't.  The problem is
that our pixel
sizes aren't down to dye cloud sizes yet (not in the consumer scanners!),
and the
printers we print with still can't reproduce quite the same subtlety of
colour or tone yet.
Owners of 1290's may take me to task there. :)

In any case until we get affordable digicams with resolution similar to
film, most of us
are scanning film at resolutions that result in aliasing of some kind, and
therefore don't
get all the possible information out of the film.

> I know that there are those out there that think grain is a dirty word and
that the
> presence of it, limits the possible size or viewing distance of a print.

Grain is only a dirty word for me because when I scan grainy film I get
aliasing.
If I could scan at (say) 8000ppi and print a 20x30" image, I might be able
to
reproduce that photographic enlargement.  Actually, for A3 sized prints I've
already improved on it because after scanning I was able to remove the dust
and scratches from the neg. :)

Rob