Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1999/09/09

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Subject: RE: [Leica] Digital darkroom: $20 per Snap
From: "Frank Filippone" <red735i@earthlink.net>
Date: Thu, 9 Sep 1999 14:51:59 -0700

I had beeen told or read somewhere that silver film has an inherent
resolution of 10 M Pixels per square inch and increasing on the T grain
technology.   For a 4x5 Neg, that is 200M Pixels, times 4 ( some say 3 )
colors per pixel, times 12 to 16 bits per pixel.  GIve or take a bit, 1.6
GBytes per snap of the shutter.  Say 10 Pictures per 20GB Hard disk.  Divide
by $200 per disk and you end up with a
cost of $20 per picture.  Ain't math great?..... Don't give up your silver
film based cameras yet.....Digital cameras still have about an order of
magnitude to go.... and that will become increasingly hard to attain as the
pixels get smaller ( transistor geometries are bigger than chemical
"clumps".  In addition, the actual SIZE of the CCD that takes in the light
is only a 1/4 to 1/3 to 1/2 inch device ( square inches or on a side? ) and
the greed factor does not want to make this larger.

Note: The issue of the number of pixels on film is a bit contorted, but
basically it is represented by the number of individual grains ( or
clumps????) that exist in or on the film emulsion.  Each of these grains
contains only a single level of light, and of a single color.  Therefore
represent the minimum particulate of the image, otherwise known on the
computer world as a pixel.

Frank



 Does anyone know how that resolution
compares to film?