digital prints and optical prints

In film printing, a contact print is as sharp as it gets. I see the

difference easy. The detail level even in a 4x6 print is greater the

larger the size negative. As you make bigger prints the size negative

and detail level becomes even more noticable.

 

In digital, you have a fixed detail level on a print. The larger file

sized does not give more detail in a 4x5 print. You only see the

larger detail level in the bigger print size.

 

Is there a reason they are not increasing the detail level and

leveling it at a hair less detail then what I print optically with a

35mm negative printed at 8x10 size using a low end 35mm lens? (I will

not add the difference using a Leica or Zeiss optic.)

Contact prints aren't necessarily any sharper than enlargements. The prime limit on the visible detail of a print is (up to a point) the limitation of human vision.

What is the definition of a "digital print"?<BR><BR>Here the general customers of ours loosely uses the term; to mean ANY TYPE print printed with a digital file. This could be a 1 bit B&W CAD file; a grey scaled CAD file; a PDF of a scan of a CAD drawing. A digital color copy from an Excel; Lotus; Wordperfect; AutoCad; Photoshop file. It may also be a outside banner; printed digitally. It maybe also a high end inkjet print; done with archival ink; or a lower end giant inkjet poster. It may also be the digital inputed photo prints that Walgreens prints from CD. Or it maybe the digital prints we did with our high speed B&W Xerox type copier; of a PDF file of some persons repair manual; that has alot of grey scale photos.<BR><BR>What exactly is a digital print? <BR><BR>The general public uses the term to mean anything printed from any type digital file.<BR><BR>Here on Photo.net; the term is many times used to mean one specific thing; or a vague zoo of things.,BR><BR>I ask this question; because Here one of the local c41 4x6 photo labs turns out pixelated prints; they are a mess to scan when we get them for court stuff. You can see the pixels plain as day with a magnifer. Their older C41 machine; pure optical made sharper; less raspy looking photos. Maybe their machine is not settup correctly. Our 600dpi digital color laser copier doesnt show the pixels when we send it a 360 to 400 ppi file.

If you pull up the web sites for the one hour printing machines, they don't talk about how good they are, but how fast they are. It looks like in a very short period of time a 300 dpi color print will be as good as it gets for most people. At 300 dpi most people precieve a print as sharp.

 

Even if they lose a few of us say 5% that they wouldn't lose at 400 dpi or more the economics of slowing their machine down by 25% make it a no brainer to do what they are doing.

 

Anyone that isn't satisfied with 300 dpi is going to have to go; wet darkroom, ink jet, or mail order Ilfochrome.

 

I just did a print at 300 dpi from a medium format negative, and it looked muddy. I sent the negative out for a Ilfochrome and the difference was night and day, but so was the price.

I refer to the digital prints which are the hybred laser prints on fuji or kodak print paper and processed chemically, or the high end professional Epson inkjet printers. They are produced by a skilled professional lab and not a discount one hour lab.

"In digital...you only see the larger detail level in the bigger print size."

 

I agree, which is why digital print sizes are only going one way...up! In my wet darkroom I rarely print larger than 8"x10", and for twenty five years never believed that was a serious constraint. With an inkjet printer I almost never print below A3 (about 11"x14"), and frequently have 20"x30" bureau prints made.

 

I suspect part of the reason is that a 300 dpi inkjet print isn't quite as visually satisfying as silver paper, so maybe we print big to push the viewer further back from the print.

So what's the best process for getting an Ilfochrome-quality print from digital?

<I>In digital, you have a fixed detail level on a print. The larger file sized does not give more detail in a 4x5 print.</i><P>I see what you are getting at, but you conclusion is based on simple geometry when we are dealing with optical physics and shining a light bulbs through film/paper emulsions. <P>First, photographic paper does not have infinite resolution. While it's certainly more than the typical 300-400 dpi of your Frontier or LightJet, the full resolving capability of photographic paper likely only gets approached when you have the contact print scenario, and even then the source film gets diffused through the paper emulsion. As soon as you start conventionally projecting the film onto photographic paper your true DPI falls off dramatically, especially if you are using 35mm. Having worked with the sharpest enlargers on the commercial market like Focomats, argon filled APO lenses, and the best machine printers like Lucht I feel confident to conclude that 300-400 dpi from a lightJet/Frontier is more than enough to defeat how much resolution from a 35mm piece of film can be 'fuzzily' optically projected onto an 8x10 piece of paper. This is why we use larger format cameras to make bigger pieces of film that look better when conventionally printed because their degree of enlargement is less. I'm also sorry to tell you this, but format size trumps what type of lens you are using on your 35mm every time.<P>You could design a digital Frontier/LightJet printer that delivered 800dpi or even higher, but it would be a wasted effort. You would have 4x the data to deal with, and diffusion of the paper surface would make the increase in resolution neglibible. Most of the problems you see with digital enlargements from 35mm are *FAR* more at the fault of bad scanning. <P>

 

 

 

<I>I just did a print at 300 dpi from a medium format negative, and it looked muddy......I sent the negative out for a Ilfochrome and the difference was night and day, but so was the price.</i><P>Learn how to scan, or find a lab that knows how to scan. I can make glorious scans from MF negs and chromes with my Epson 1640 flatbed, so I'm not very sympathetic when it comes to these type of complaints.<P> I've been to photo exhibits where 4 out of 5 large prints from MF were not acceptable by *my* standards because the idiot who made the custom print didn't know what a stupid grain focuser was. Boy, if you like printing negatives on Ilforchrome, you should try conventionally printing slides on Kodak Portra III. I'll also take on *any* Ilfochrome you want to bring to the party with my scans and digital LightJet prints on FujiFlex or Kodak Metallic. <P>Given a decent enlarger I can produce a sharper conventional 8x10 print from MF film than a 300-400dpi LightJet/Frontier print. I'll give you that. Once you start getting bigger than 8x10 though and the digital printers win. They are not subject to film flexure, enlarger lenses not optimized for flat fields, poorly aligned base boards, photographic paper not being held directly flat on the easle, etc. Many of my original 16x20 I optically printed when I did commercial custom printing I've since reporduced with scanning and digital printing. The trannies always look better, and usually the negs. If you're one of those that insists on looking at every enlargement with a loupe to see the dpi limit, then I'd like to know where you were at the last 30 or so photographic fairs I had to endure looking at mushy, barrel distorted grain in conventional prints.<p>This again is the double standard with digital vs optical printing. An optical print can be technically bad in terms of enlarger technique, but it's rarely criticized. If you see a single artifact with an 8x loupe with a digital print, it's a conspiracy.