[Leica] My DMR's back, M8 chatter, big prints &c

[lists at gilplant.com (J. Gilbert Plantinga)]

My DMR is back, I picked it up from Leica today after exactly one  
week in the shop. It has a new main circuit board.

Yesterday someone posted that they were sold on the M8 after seeing a  
40 x 60 print. I inquired as to whether that was inches or  
centimeters and we have yet to hear.

I've never printed anything from the DMR larger than 16 x 24 inches,  
and to do that on my Epson 9800 does require some upsampling to get  
to the native 360 dpi of the printer. I just upsampled (using bicubic  
smoother) a 100 ISO shot that I took with the DMR/R8 and the Super- 
Angulon PC on a tripod with studio strobes to the full 40 x 60 and it  
looks like it might make an acceptable print - the tones are a little  
'blotchy' and have an obvious digital look to them; sharpness (with  
aggressive smart sharpening in PS) is acceptable at a reasonable  
viewing distance. But I'm not going to actually print it.

On the other hand, I just printed a 40 x 60 inch picture for a  
client,  scanned from Fuji Provia 100 at 8000 ppi on the Imacon 949.  
It was taken with a Leica R and the 28 Elmarit hand-held. The image  
is a little soft on one edge (DOF issue), and up close the grain  
looks a little mushy, but from 6 feet away the picture rocks! And  
it's headed to a gallery.

To get to 40 x 60 from a slide at 8000 ppi still takes some  
upsampling. But I wouldn't compare a 4000 ppi scan from a prosumer  
scanner with the images from the DMR (nor the M8); at 4000 ppi you've  
still left a lot of information on the film.

Neither picture comes close to what I'm getting from my 4 x 5 and  
Schnieder glass regarding fine detail, though the Imacon can only  
scan the 4 x 5 at 2040 ppi.

And this is all very subjective.

I'd like to see a 160 ISO DNG from the M8 upsampled to this  
ridiculous print size; heck I'd love to have an M8, but I need to  
sell some more scans and prints to get there. And for most of my  
commercial work you'd have to pry the DMR from my cold dead hands.


Gilbert
http://www.upstatelight.com