Actually I could do all the processing at home, but I am also limited to the resolution of the monitor. Id heard of contact printing, but I wondered if it could be done by say printing it out on a 4x5 and then using an enlarger. Now if you used a bigger file, but used the maximum resolution of the printer instead of the typical 300dpi we would typically use for a photo, would you see a significant increase in the quality? Granted you can't make film without a great deal of expense, but would this be a usable alternative? 300 ppi for a 4x5 is 1200x1500 pixels. shooting a computer monitor with a real resolution of higher would possibly give better results (mine is 1024x1600) however shooting an image made 300 ppi at 8x10 is 2400x3000 pixels you'd be getting. Still only a 6Mp image but substantially more of your digital image file conveyed to film (minus losses) .. and much better than the 1.8 Mp's worth above As to exceeding the 300 ppi 'standard' - more below when we talk 300 ppi prints that's really the limit of what the human eye is supposed to be able to see, you *can* print at higher ppi rates but bear in mind if you go too silly, you risk cutting into the bitdepth and colour accuracy. Eg, using the example of printers capable of 4800 dpi which use 6 separate colours at a viewing resolution of 300 ppi, each linear pixel can have 16 squirts of the various 6 inks to make up each pixel colour. (16 spots x 300 ppi = 1 inch at 4800) <<256 colour dots per actual square pixel>> (8 bit ;) If you were to double this to print at say 600 ppi, you'd be cutting down the number of colours available per linear pixel to 8. Some colours will not render particularly well with such limitations. <<64 colour dots per square pixel>> (less than 8 bit) better would be to stick to around 300ppi prints but size them accordingly for maximum area and photograph them to create a copy neg. so if you have a 12Mp image (3000x4000 pixels) you'd be best printing a 10 inch x 13.3 inch image. Keep it in mind this method is very different from film recorders which use a CRT and filters, the CRT scanning at up to (or maybe beyond) around 5000 vertical lines of resolution - the limit to the horizontal amount being the digital image it's self (as the lines are analogue not digital, ie continuous rather than discreet 'blocks', so 5000x 6000 or 5000x120,000 makes no difference other than the film probably wont record much more than the former - and you'd need a anamorphic lens to deal with the output ; ) karl
