[Leica] silver vs pixels

[jonathan at openhealth.org (Jonathan Borden)]

  Frank Filippone wrote:

> Since you asked......
>
> I have never seen a B+W digital print that I could not identify as  
> such.  I
> can see pixelation, jaggies, moire patterns, banding, and almost  
> anything
> else when I look at digital B+W.  I simply am very sensitive to the  
> optical
> effects of digitization.  The form of scientific inspection that I  
> view
> with, you may not consider fair, and the same digital print  may  
> not bother
> you, or the guy next to you, or even his neighbor, but it bothers me.

The only reason you ought see pixelation is that the print is printed  
at too low a resolution (or the image is acquired at too low a  
resolution, bit depth or with lossy compression). Same for jaggies  
and moire patterns. Digital artifacts are nothing more or less than  
the effect of inadequate resolution, or the application of an overly  
aggressive algorithm e.g. trying to sharpen a blurry image.

If you are enlarging from 35mm film and scanning at 5400 ppi i.e.  
from the commonly available Minolta scanner, that yields a roughly 40  
megapixel source. You can print such a scanned image digitally at 300  
ppi (yielding a 20x24 print) which should have no detectable digital  
artifacts at least to the naked eye. If 5400 ppi scanning is not good  
enough for you, you can have your negatives scanned at 8000 ppi.

The problems you are seeing with digital images are not problems  
inherent to digital images, rather the compromises made when those  
prints were made. But then all photographic techniques involve some  
sort of compromise.

Jonathan