Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2000/09/20
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]I really think that if all you are doing with digital imagery is squeezing out a gazillion shades of grey, then you are not having fun yet. Not that Jon Cone isn't doing an amazing job. It's just that you can do anything you want with an image in Photoshop, paint programs etc., without leaving the computer. Negatives and chromes are _documents_. Digital images are whatever you want to do with them. I can't help but wonder what goes on now in the coolscan digital world of government press in some parts of the globe. - -David Binder (just making a case *for* negative scanners (and Leica M's)) > Date: Wed, 20 Sep 2000 15:59:56 -0400 > From: John Brownlow <john@pinkheadedbug.com> > Subject: Re: [Leica] Meta Photokina - warning! heretical contents! > Message-ID: <B5EE8F7C.1BA6%john@pinkheadedbug.com> > References: > > on 20/9/00 3:20 pm, David Binder at dbinder@sympatico.ca wrote: > > > Read Jon Cone's (creator of the piezography system) 'Higher Grounds' > > thread at > > > > http://www.egroups.com/message/piezography3000/332?threaded=1 > > > > For reasons he describes, digital cameras provide results that are > > *better* than film. If true, then the filmscanner road is less than > > ideal with respect to image result. > > > > -David Binder (not looking forward to a battery dependent future) > > Interesting. When Jon Cone talks, I listen!! > > I think a lot of it depends on how you acquire your images. In a field? In a > studio? On the street? Your choice of equipment is determined by many other > factors than simple image quality. > > However, that article does reveal something else which I have started to > discover for myself and which I know will drive some folks here to issue > fatwas or burn me for heresy but here goes... > > My Epson 1160 with the piezo software is capable of rendering MORE detail > than a photographic print. > > I mean tonality here, rather than fine detail. I mean it can make a print > that has more shadow detail and highlight detail than a photographic print. > > How do I know this? > > Because an ongoing topic of discussion among piezo users is 'how you make a > piezo print look like a photograph'. > > Here's the answer, basically: you throw away information. > > You crush the blacks so that what would ordinarily print as 98% gray prints > as 100% black. In doing this of course you are throwing away shadow detail. > However that's when it starts to look like a photo. > > If you use the piezo system to produce a technically accurate print of a > negative, with b/w points set correctly, gamma dialled in right, midtones > lifted to where you want them, with all the full range of shadow and > highlight detail on display... > > ... it doesn't look like a photograph. > > Wierd eh? > > - -- > - -- > Johnny Deadman > > http://www.pinkheadedbug.com