Mark Blackwell asks > Add in one other complication. Resolving power does absolutely no good unless the paper can reproduce it. You can scan files at far more than 300 dpi at the final output size, but if a printer can not use the extra information what good is it?? well thats a whole additional level again! and you're right, though some would argue downsampling from a higher amount of data should give you a better result.. and I guess I should support this since I keep bringing up nyquist limits! ;) And I guess it would, but at 300 ppi I can't see the jaggies so I find everything to be fine on said digital print - and it's all about the way the image looks anyway, most of the time. But perception aside, there's the whole viewing distance that adds to the party here. Sure at a viewing distance of X we'd see the same info as we did when we peered at our contact sheet through a loupe - but that digital file can be a lot more limited than film when it comes to making bigger prints. Grab the 16x20 made from a 4x5 neg, grab a magnifying glass and look at the details hidden in the print way beyond the normal perception at the traditional viewing distance! You'll not see that in the digital print :( On the whole I find the image as a picture made from digital cameras to be 'good enough' for most things. Certainly convenient, certainly more convenient than 35mm (which digital displaced as a convenient format) but on other occasions digital ain't good enough, and 66, 4x5 and 8x10 films start looking a whole lot more attractive! Price definitely. Quality definitely. Convenience defiantly. they really are different, film and digital, but no more so than say 35mm and 8x10 each has its place. personally I'd rather pay a small amount for 4x5 film, camera and lens than the digital equivalents and I'd rather store the film than the large files on hard drives. and had I the need to reproduce heaps of prints or manipulate the image heavily then I'd probably digitize the image work on it digitally and (being tight fisted) just save the image as a file appropriate to the intended print size rather than having it outputted back to film but then that's the whole convenience thing creeping in again ;) karl
