Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2000/03/19
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]>I'm sympathetic to the temptation to compare things like MTF >percentages and extropolate out to what "should be" the case, but >it amounts to wishful thinking--more careful research than that is >required to find the truth. There is more to "print quality" than >lp/mm. Mark R: >>>My language may be weak but this language is thoughtlessly demeaning and insensitive.<<< Well, I certainly didn't intend it to be insulting, and I'm sorry if it sounded that way. I meant what I said. I really am sympathetic to the temptation to extropolate such things as system resolution, for instance, mathematically instead of by trial. But I've come to believe that it's seldom a valid approach--I think there are too many variables that impinge on actual printmaking for the mathematical modeling to be consistently valid. Note that I didn't say that MTF data is invalid--I merely said that starting with this data and extropolating what "should" happen in a print based on this data is a wrongheaded approach--and I believe it is. Believe me, I've been over this territory many times with our contributors who write on system resolution and related topics--who are in various cases engineers, mathematicians or physicists, or lens designers. If you like, I can reference a list of articles we've published over the years that address this subject. I don't agree with all of the authors' conclusions (nor would they all agree with me), but the discussions are illuminating. - --Mike