My M6c 2006 Curt Miller
The Daily bLog
Today was another non-prednisone day, a day when the antibodies have been dumped into my bloodstream and life - and mobility - are a little less than perfect. Thus, I decided to do what a lot of people do on Saturdays...take it easy, something that certainly doesn't come easy for me, a fact to which anyone who knows me can attest.
Over the past several weeks, I have been carefully and critically evaluating my past, present and future imaging interests and considering my capture and printing options. I've made a few important observations and am making my plans for my future work based on those observations.
First, film is far superior to digital as a capture medium, at least for those of us who can't afford $10,000 for a Leaf digital back for our Hasselblads. Comparing optimized B&W output from a large print, it appears that a 400ASA 35mm negative has about a fity percent advantage over a six megapixel digital SLR. What I mean by this is that the print quality of a 10x15 inch print from a high resolution scan of a 400ASA 35mm negative has the same image quality as an 8x12 inch print from a 6 megapixel digital camera. If I print the digital image to 10x15, it loses image quality to the extent the difference between the two capture media is noticeable.
Second, digital prints made from a 35mm negative can be extraordinary! The picture today is the 10x15 print I made from a 400ASA color negative from my Leica, manipulated in Photoshop, converted to B&W and output from my Epson 2000P printer (using black ink only). The print is nothing short of exquisite, and I will be happy to continue to print digitally from my 35mm negatives.
Finally, while I don't have a good film scanner, my pro-lab does. The print above was made from a negative scanned to a high resolution by my lab. I am unable to duplcate this quality with the scanner I do have and, I suspect, if the same negative were scanned with a drum scanner, the possibility for a knockout 20x30 print becomes a tempting proposition for me to try next. If is does work out, that means we would need a full 20 megapixels worth of digital capture to get the quality we've got laying around in lowly, low-tech film. Interestingly, that's exactly what experts were saying six or seven years ago when everyone became so enamored with digital capture and were claiming their 1.2 megapixel cameras "blew away" film.
Yea, right.
