35mm print sizes

[ancient_mariner]

so this guy was talking a load of ..... http://www.photo-i.co.uk/Reviews/interactive/Epson V750/page_8.htm ?
This 35mm shot was done by a lab...the cigarette packet was to show the size and the white smudge was my flashgun

The original shot low scan from Boots or Tesco seen on a computer screen..h'mm I seem to have the eyes slightly OOF..superia 200 taken about 7 years ago and would think new Ektar or Potra might have given better quality...just guessing.

My instinct is to say that he may not be critical of his images:

The only valid test is to print the picture and view it at a reasonable distance before making a judgment.

I have no experience scanning and printing negs and only from wet darkroom work, but I would expect a print from 35mm that was >20" on the long side to show discernably degraded image quality when viewed at around 12", which is where I would examine my prints for quality. Sure I could hang it on the wall, stand back, squint a bit and declare "That's perfect!" but I know I'd be kidding myself.

 

[StephenM]

"These films, with good lenses, are capable of resolving as much as 7000 pixels (3500 "line pairs") over the width of a 35mm frame -- about 5000 dots per inch. However, before that point, while they can resolve "line pairs," the image is pretty noisy. The lines are not resolved as straight, sharp-edged entities, but you can tell there is a white line next to a black line.

I appreciate that the quote is itself a quotation...

The Kodak Black and White Darkroom Dataguide starts with a full page full length portrait, and then follows it with 13x enlargements of the head only on 8 different Kodak films. The one on Technical Pan is very, very obviously far, far superior to the second best. Technical Pan has a quoted resolving power of 320 lines per mm; the next best film has 200, and then the drop from 125 down to 63 begins. Technical Pan is such a good film that naturally it's been discontinued...

The highest resolving lens I've come across is a Micro Nikkor lens with an aerial resolution of 1250 lppm. Unfortunately, this resolution only holds over a 2mm field, and only with light of a wavelength of 546nm.

Putting the two together, there's an empirical formula that in its simpler form predicts that the combined resolution is obtained by summing the reciprocals of film and lens resolution and then taking the reciprocal. With these figures, that gives 1/320 + 1/1250 = 0.003925 and hence 255 lppm. Or 6115 line pairs over the frame. That's using what's hardly a normal lens and a film you can't get!. Sydney Ray (Applied Photographic Optics) states that the minimum performance of a 50mm f/2 standard lens on 35mm would be 40 lppm on axis, doubling to 80 lppm at optimum aperture. This puts the 1250 in perspective. Putting those figures in (and we'll assume 100 for the lens and 125 for the film) we get 56 lppm, or 1,333 across the shorter side of 35mm. The 125 for the film is the next step down from Technical Pan in the Kodak book, for TMax100. The film, as Sydney Ray states, is the biggest limiter of performance.

 

[excalibur2]

I've subtlely highlighted the important part.

My results are the same using an Olympus OM4 with an Olympus 50mm f/1.4 lens (stopped down in daylight conditions on a sunny afternoon). I can quite simply see the difference between an image of the whole (scanned) negative that fills my screen and one that uses less than 10x8" of it. What I'm looking for is the maximum size of print that you can make without it looking inferior (when compared side by side) with a smaller one. As I said at the outset, it's subjective; but I see no reason for my personal work to be technically inferior simply because I couldn't be bothered to use a larger format that can still handle the job equally well. As I always say, a camera is simply a tool; and provided it does the job as well, the larger the better. Up to a point; I don't deny that I'd get a better A2 print from a 20"x16" negative than a 5x4 one, but beyond a certain size the practical difficulties mount up.

There is a limit to how much you can enlarge black and white film (and remember, I don't use colour) without the photographic artefacts intruding. Roger Hicks/Frances Shultz illustrate the half tone effect in their book on medium and large format photography, and reckon that 6x is the most you can enlarge without the quality suffering. This squares pretty well with my own experience.

The very best print I've had before my RB67/RZ67/5x4 days came from a Brownie Flash20 6x6 box camera; the print was half plate (4.75" x 6.5"). Despite the cheap (plastic) lens, the degree of enlargement was modest.

In passing: my enlarging lenses are Rokkor, Componon (I think - it's the 6 element type) and Rodagons.

Well I prefer MF over 35mm and it started in the darkroom as I was fed up with small spots on the neg (35mm) enlarged to golf balls in the print. But my point was about not being happy going over 8X10.....very indirectly you are saying all the well known photographers who ever used 35mm couldn't get a very good print over 8X10 either, as you had quality gear and you weren't happy.

 

[ancient_mariner]

Well I prefer MF over 35mm and it started in the darkroom as I was fed up with small spots on the neg (35mm) enlarged to golf balls in the print. But my point was about not being happy going over 8X10.....very indirectly you are saying all the well known photographers who ever used 35mm couldn't get a very good print over 8X10 either, as you had quality gear and you weren't happy.

I know you've quote Stephen, but I'll wander in here anyway. It's sometimes interesting to look at image quality from some of the old masters, and to realise that it was often much lower than we would expect today in terms of resolving power and crisp detail - the further you go back, the less technically great many images were. We're much fussier about the fine detail now, perhaps because our kit's so good, perhaps because we photograph differently.

 

[excalibur2]

I know you've quote Stephen, but I'll wander in here anyway. It's sometimes interesting to look at image quality from some of the old masters, and to realise that it was often much lower than we would expect today in terms of resolving power and crisp detail - the further you go back, the less technically great many images were. We're much fussier about the fine detail now, perhaps because our kit's so good, perhaps because we photograph differently.

Well you have a point but I can't believe a good photographer e.g. Galen Rowell never produced an excellent print over 8X10..and all he used was Nikon 35mm gear.
http://www.mountainlight.com/rowellg.html

 

[Mr Badger]

Going back briefly to the scan samples I posted, after considerable pixel peeping I think the 3200dpi scan seems to have resolved the most detail, and that will be my starting point for scanning 35mm film in future. It also gives a file size of around 3mb and should reduce the scan time for each frame too, as opposed to scanning at 4800 or 6400. I was a bit disappointed with the results from that Kodak Retinette camera when I first scanned the film, but after seeing the full size scan I posted here (which was scanned at 3200) I don't think it's too bad now!

All I have to do is now is to repeat the process for medium format and I'm sorted! Hope the comparison was useful, I'd be interested to know if others with an Epson 500 or 600 series scanner obtain similar results when scanning at the same resolutions, so please let me know your findings.

 

[ancient_mariner]

Well you have a point but I can't believe a good photographer e.g. Galen Rowell never produced an excellent print over 8X10..and all he used was Nikon 35mm gear.
http://www.mountainlight.com/rowellg.html

The quality of photographer, past the point of technical competence, has no influence on the quality of print that can be obtained. The issue is the limitations of equipment - laws of physics if you will - that prevent a 35mm neg producing a super-sharp and detailed 20 X 30 print, even though it probably looks absolutely brilliant at a distance greater than 4 feet away. However it's entirely likely that a great photographer will produce images that make you fail to notice a small fall off in detail when you see their work printed large, and that may well be what matters more.

 

[ChrisR]

Going back briefly to the scan samples I posted, after considerable pixel peeping I think the 3200dpi scan seems to have resolved the most detail, and that will be my starting point for scanning 35mm film in future. It also gives a file size of around 3mb and should reduce the scan time for each frame too, as opposed to scanning at 4800 or 6400. I was a bit disappointed with the results from that Kodak Retinette camera when I first scanned the film, but after seeing the full size scan I posted here (which was scanned at 3200) I don't think it's too bad now!

All I have to do is now is to repeat the process for medium format and I'm sorted! Hope the comparison was useful, I'd be interested to know if others with an Epson 500 or 600 series scanner obtain similar results when scanning at the same resolutions, so please let me know your findings.

I also came to the conclusion that the 3200 scan showed a bit more detail in the twigs on the right of the "middle" tree than either the 2400 or 4800 and above scans. Very interesting test which maybe I should try to replicate with the Plustek!

 

[StephenM]

.very indirectly you are saying all the well known photographers who ever used 35mm couldn't get a very good print over 8X10 either, as you had quality gear and you weren't happy.

Well, I'll say it directly then. I have NEVER seen a print from 35mm greater than 10x8 that I would accept technically. I have always been aware of grain, fuzziness or lack of fine detail compared to the results that I know can be achieved with larger negatives. This is not a comment on the ability of the photographer, I doubt that anyone would deny that the D Day landing photos would have been technically better on 5x4 or 10x8 film. That they would not have been possible on large format is the point; but the print quality doesn't hold water. Like the D Day landings, some photography is done better/made possible with smaller formats. But in the cases where all sizes can be used - specifically, the type of photos I take - then the bigger negative always wins, and 35mm always fails. For me.

Toni - I put it down to the advance of smaller formats over larger ones, and not the age of the photographs. In the days before it went digital and TV screens, the gallery above the main bath at the Roman Baths in Bath had large prints of the baths in earlier days on the walls. It was perfectly clear to my eyes that the older photographs were sharper, clearer and with more detail than the later ones. I admit I have no idea what cameras were used, and I'm assuming that negative size went down rather than quality of lenses and film/plates, but I'm open to correction if the turn of the century materials/equipment were superior to the 1930s.

And I did say at the outset in my first post, that maximum print size was subjective. I'm very old fashioned, and have the same attitude shown by an enthusiastic reviewer of the new Daguerrotype process - that the detail recorded was amazing, and no matter how closely you looked (even using a microscope) there was more to find. I also, when seeing a print of a detailed scene, want to examine it closely and pay no attention to the "stand well back - this has been enlarged too much for you take a close look" rule (otherwise known as "correct viewing distance"). My subjective rule is that I want to be able to examine a print under a 4x loup and see more detail than I could with my eyes alone, and see no evidence of grain. My print sizes and negative sizes are chosen to make this achieveable; I regard 6x as pushing it but possible.

 

[ancient_mariner]

Well, I'll say it directly then. I have NEVER seen a print from 35mm greater than 10x8 that I would accept technically. I have always been aware of grain, fuzziness or lack of fine detail compared to the results that I know can be achieved with larger negatives. This is not a comment on the ability of the photographer, I doubt that anyone would deny that the D Day landing photos would have been technically better on 5x4 or 10x8 film. That they would not have been possible on large format is the point; but the print quality doesn't hold water. Like the D Day landings, some photography is done better/made possible with smaller formats. But in the cases where all sizes can be used - specifically, the type of photos I take - then the bigger negative always wins, and 35mm always fails. For me.

And I did say at the outset in my first post, that maximum print size was subjective. I'm very old fashioned, and have the same attitude shown by an enthusiastic reviewer of the new Daguerrotype process - that the detail recorded was amazing, and now matter how closely you looked (even using a microscope) there was more to find. I also, when seeing a print of a detailed scene, want to examine it closely and pay no attention to the "stand well back - this has been enlarged too much for you take a close look" rule (otherwise known as "correct viewing distance"). My subjective rule is that I want to be able to examine a print under a 4x loup and see more detail than I could with my eyes alone, and see no evidence of grain. My print sizes and negative sizes are chosen to make this achieveable; I regard 6x as pushing it but possible.

I can see why you'd accept max 10X8 and I'd sometimes go to 12X16 then!

 

[Mr Badger]

I also came to the conclusion that the 3200 scan showed a bit more detail in the twigs on the right of the "middle" tree than either the 2400 or 4800 and above scans. Very interesting test which maybe I should try to replicate with the Plustek!

I think you'd be daft not to try; I'm just rescanning some Ektar 100 negs from a Voigtlander Vito BL I was originally slightly disappointed with, and they are coming out with more detail than before, so perhaps give a couple of shots a rescan at different resolution and see how you go? If nothing else, it might indicate you'd got it right originally!

 

[StephenM]

Going back to scanning resolutions: I use VueScan with an Epson flatbed for my 5x4 negatives and always scan at maximum resolution. I save the raw scan (so I can change things later if I wish without rescanning) and usually have the TIFF reduced on a "four pixel to one" basis which gives me a reasonable scan size of around 340,000 KB.

One advantage of a large scan size that doesn't seem to attract much attention is that it means you can feather selections in Photoshop to a greater extent than with a smaller scan, resulting in smoother transitions if you selectively lighten/darken areas etc.

 

[ChrisR]

Reduced by a factor of 4 to 340 MB!!!!! You're certainly operating in a different universe to me, Stephen!

With the exception of creating a print, by the way (which does merit close inspection, possibly even with a loupe), I would only every judge a print at something like normal viewing distance, so that colours some of my comments above. Plus I've realised long since that it's my ability, rather than camera, lens, film or printer, that limits the results in almost all cases. It's why I've not felt to bothered about MF. LF is a different thing; it has additional capabilities that might be interesting to try to understand, but to me MF means bigger and heavier camera and lens, and a bigger negative that won't give a better image because of me! But I don't really want to divert this thread down that rabbit hole...

 

[ancient_mariner]

Reduced by a factor of 4 to 340 MB!!!!! You're certainly operating in a different universe to me, Stephen!

With the exception of creating a print, by the way (which does merit close inspection, possibly even with a loupe), I would only every judge a print at something like normal viewing distance, so that colours some of my comments above. Plus I've realised long since that it's my ability, rather than camera, lens, film or printer, that limits the results in almost all cases. It's why I've not felt to bothered about MF. LF is a different thing; it has additional capabilities that might be interesting to try to understand, but to me MF means bigger and heavier camera and lens, and a bigger negative that won't give a better image because of me! But I don't really want to divert this thread down that rabbit hole...

I'm slightly intrigued as to why *you* would be the limit of quality, rather than the gear. If you focus accurately, hold the camera steady enough and make sure that aperture & shutter speed are suitable then the bit about resolution etc just looks after itself.

 

[ChrisR]

I'm slightly intrigued as to why *you* would be the limit of quality, rather than the gear. If you focus accurately, hold the camera steady enough and make sure that aperture & shutter speed are suitable then the bit about resolution etc just looks after itself.

Well there's 4 reasons I might get it wrong, Toni, plus there's composition which is the biggest issue in most cases! I do know how to do it, mostly, it's just remembering to get everything right at the same time which bugs me...

 

[ChrisR]

I think you'd be daft not to try; I'm just rescanning some Ektar 100 negs from a Voigtlander Vito BL I was originally slightly disappointed with, and they are coming out with more detail than before, so perhaps give a couple of shots a rescan at different resolution and see how you go? If nothing else, it might indicate you'd got it right originally!

I just went looking for a suitable test frame, assuming I want a low ISO film and something suitably delicate in the middle of the frame that isn't oof. May have something taken with Precisa last autumn that I think is in focus.

 

[Nod]

I've done a few high resolution scans on both a Minolta Scan-Dual IV and a Canon flatbed (whose model number escapes me but could be a 9000) and have done several A3+ prints from the results to see if they can take it. IMO, not really! At about 4' (as suggested above) they're acceptable but A4 is really the limit for handing round. IIRC the images were all shot on Fuji Provia 200 slide film.

(Please not that the experiments were done when I was ill so my recollection could be off. Everything is on another computer which needs digging out! Even the backup HDD is buried, along with the plug for its power supply...)

 

[excalibur2]

Going back briefly to the scan samples I posted, after considerable pixel peeping I think the 3200dpi scan seems to have resolved the most detail, and that will be my starting point for scanning 35mm film in future. It also gives a file size of around 3mb and should reduce the scan time for each frame too, as opposed to scanning at 4800 or 6400. I was a bit disappointed with the results from that Kodak Retinette camera when I first scanned the film, but after seeing the full size scan I posted here (which was scanned at 3200) I don't think it's too bad now!

All I have to do is now is to repeat the process for medium format and I'm sorted! Hope the comparison was useful, I'd be interested to know if others with an Epson 500 or 600 series scanner obtain similar results when scanning at the same resolutions, so please let me know your findings.

You can get away with a low Asda scan 1800 X 1280.
My test shot of a faulty 19mm lens as shown on the computer screen ignore left and right OOF areas.


A4 print (8X11") from a good 8 year old printer, ignore slight magenta cast as the printer is not calibrated to the monitor

 

[Ben johns]

Does anyone do any adjustments to the scan before they scan it in? On the v550 you do a preview then have the option to adjust the blacks and whites and so on. As I scan as a tiff I never bothered but doing the adjustments later equals quite some grain, especially when I darkened a sky a bit. Just wondered if making the adjustments as it's scanned remedies this

 

[Asha]

sometimes it is better to make adjustments at the scanner stage......in effect it potentially allows more detail to obtained from the negative as against trying to obtain that same detail from a scan that wasn't adjusted in pp.
I was advised to do this by another film shooter on here @DNH although in reality I've found it difficult to implicate on my computer/scanner software as the preview image is somewhat too small to assess the pre scan properly.
Best thing to do is try both methods and see which works best for you.

 

[Ben johns]

sometimes it is better to make adjustments at the scanner stage......in effect it potentially allows more detail to obtained from the negative as against trying to obtain that same detail from a scan that wasn't adjusted in pp.
I was advised to do this by another film shooter on here @DNH although in reality I've found it difficult to implicate on my computer/scanner software as the preview image is somewhat too small to assess the pre scan properly.
Best thing to do is try both methods and see which works best for you.

thats what i found, i just tried it and found the preview so low res and small it was too hard. majority of the time i like the contrast and levels that the film has right away. All ive been doing at the moment really is darken skies, going to be getting some filters soon so hopefully that wont be a problem. also whats the advantage of multi tiff? i just tried it and didnt see any advantge apart form a bigger file size

 

[Asha]

Multi TIFF??.......absolutely no idea and I aint booting the desktop to take a look!

 

[Asha]

https://www.google.co.uk/#q=what+is+multi+tiff&*

 

[FujiLove]

So does scanning at a higher dpi effect the image in a bad way?

Interesting question. I looked at some sample images produced by the Plustek 120 scanner, and the lower resolutions were sharper and seemed to contain at least as much detail as the much higher (4x) resolution images that had been scaled down. To my eyes they actually looked more detailed. Maybe that was simply an indication of the scanners optical limits, but it was quite low resolution (something like 1800dpi) for a £1600 scanner.

 

[Mr Badger]

Interesting question. I looked at some sample images produced by the Plustek 120 scanner, and the lower resolutions were sharper and seemed to contain at least as much detail as the much higher (4x) resolution images that had been scaled down. To my eyes they actually looked more detailed. Maybe that was simply an indication of the scanners optical limits, but it was quite low resolution (something like 1800dpi) for a £1600 scanner.

I think the answer to the original question was probably illustrated in post #33, but your comments seem to add support to the findings, has anyone else experienced this?

 

[ChrisR]

Does anyone do any adjustments to the scan before they scan it in? On the v550 you do a preview then have the option to adjust the blacks and whites and so on. As I scan as a tiff I never bothered but doing the adjustments later equals quite some grain, especially when I darkened a sky a bit. Just wondered if making the adjustments as it's scanned remedies this

IIRC advice is to adjust the white and black points so that you're capturing all there is on the shot in as wide a range as possible. I rarely do anything more than that with Vuescan, but it does sometimes need quite a bit of work in PP.

Last black and white film I scanned with Vuescan was Delta 400. I played about with the few black and white presets that Vuescan offers, and in the end really liked the generic preset best!

 

[Ben johns]

IIRC advice is to adjust the white and black points so that you're capturing all there is on the shot in as wide a range as possible. I rarely do anything more than that with Vuescan, but it does sometimes need quite a bit of work in PP.

Last black and white film I scanned with Vuescan was Delta 400. I played about with the few black and white presets that Vuescan offers, and in the end really liked the generic preset best!

i dont use the histogram so excuse the simplistic terms. to adjust the blacks and whites i just drag them to the edges as far as there is information?

 

[FishyFish]

I use the histogram sometimes in the Epson Scan software. It's not ideal though, mostly because, although it's possible to enlarge the image, it's still not that detailed, plus for some reason, on my PC the color profile seems off on the software and it tends to crush the blacks and blow the highlights in the display making it difficult to judge any fine changes.

 

[StephenM]

Does anyone do any adjustments to the scan before they scan it in? On the v550 you do a preview then have the option to adjust the blacks and whites and so on. As I scan as a tiff I never bothered but doing the adjustments later equals quite some grain, especially when I darkened a sky a bit. Just wondered if making the adjustments as it's scanned remedies this

I assume that you're using Epson Scan or Silverfast? I haven't used either for years, preferring VueScan so I can't comment/don't know what adjustments you can make. On the basic question of adjusting the scan parameters first, I'd emphatically say yes.

Think of it this way. The film image is more or less a continuous tone. And so is the data actually read by the scanner. It's only digitised when the TIFF or jpg is written, which is another way of saying that the tones are at that point rendered as discrete values. No more 10% black here, 10.15% here and so on; you're down to integral values. If you get the tone mapping right before fixing these values, you'll have a complete histogram with all intregral values there. As soon as you adjust the digitised images with levels, curves or whatever, you're stretching out the values and creating gaps. The net effect is an image with fewer tonal values. I can testify from personal experience that if you get the scan spectacularly wrong, you'll get a file that even Photoshop can't fix. The best advice is to get the best scan you can before attempting any processing, just as you try to get the best negative you can before attempting to print it.

I was originally sold on VueScan simply because it lets me save the raw scanner data and reprocess to my heart's content without needing to take the time to rescan. In the old days (when a single negative took four hours to scan) this was a great timesaver, and let me experiment until I got things right.

 

[excalibur2]

Well, I'll say it directly then. I have NEVER seen a print from 35mm greater than 10x8 that I would accept technically

Just thought:- does the format of 35mm apply to results from a 35mm digi camera also?

 

[Ben johns]

Just thought:- does the format of 35mm apply to results from a 35mm digi camera also?

Wouldn't it depend on the megapixel of the camera? I've printed a 12"x12" photo from my old a5000 which is 21megapixel I think. That was cropped to 12"X12" and has a lot of detail

 

[ancient_mariner]

Just thought:- does the format of 35mm apply to results from a 35mm digi camera also?

It probably depends on the camera (sensor) and lens used. I'd say that the quality from my D610 with a decent prime is more like MF, certainly up there with 645 when printing.

 

[ancient_mariner]

Wouldn't it depend on the megapixel of the camera? I've printed a 12"x12" photo from my old a5000 which is 21megapixel I think. That was cropped to 12"X12" and has a lot of detail

It's much more down to lens resolution - at 20MP an APS-C sensor will generally out-resolve most lenses available.

 

[StephenM]

Just thought:- does the format of 35mm apply to results from a 35mm digi camera also?

As I pointed out earlier (post 42) the weakest link in the chain or recording medium resolution/size/lens is the resolution of the film, which is why all films don't enlarge well. That doesn't answer your question, I know - but as it's not a film question I'll leave it at that.

Edit to add:

Actually, I'll add one further point that was implicit in post 42 but not spelled out. The lower (final) resolution I gave there was on the film - to make a print you need to pass that image through another lens (be it scanner or enlarger) to make a print unless you're happy with contact prints. That gives another knock to the detail resolved.

 

[excalibur2]

Well I'm still baffled by Stephen's remark about the quality of 35mm film not being acceptable to him over a 8 X 10 print.......well you can see on the net results from a drum scan of 35 neg (slow B\W film) and the results are very good at a high crop, so a print of say 8 X 10 to 12 X 16 should be very good.

 

[Kei]

I've achieved excellent results up to 24x18" but generally it only comes from films slower than ISO 100 primarily slide. (kodachrome, velvia, provia & astia and the likes of ACROS, panF, RPX25) The scanner makes a huge difference too, as these were done on a nikon coolscan V ED.

Sharpness of the actual shot on the film is critical. Any slight shake or misfocus may not be obvious at 10x8 or smaller but gets increasingly more obvious the bigger you go.

 

[StephenM]

Well I'm still baffled by Stephen's remark about the quality of 35mm film not being acceptable to him over a 8 X 10 print

I'm baffled as to why you're still banging on about this remark. Would it help if I said that I obviously have better eyesight? Not at all, actually. You've already conceded my point when you said

At the camera club inter comps I saw plenty of quite large prints from 35mm, but they did look a bit crappier compared to MF ones next to it.

I'm looking and deciding whether a print is as good as it possibly could be, and you're going (I assume) with "good enough".

In any case, it's hard to see why you're baffled by my remark when you've already conceded that a larger format will give better results in the print.

I read on another forum some time ago a post where the author said that he's once been in a camera shop where the assistent showed a 20x16 print from 35mm and enthused over the quality. The author said nothing, but posted that it was obvious that said assistant had never seen a 20x16 print from a large format negative to compare. A "just noticeable difference" is just that - only noticeable as a difference between two items, and requires to have both side by side to make the comparison. The slightly inferior will only show up as such when directly compared. How many steps down does it take for the JND to become a screaming difference? I don't know. But I do know that my eyes tell me that 35mm printed over 10x8 (and very often in my experience, at 10x8!) isn't as good as it gets. This is wet printing; I touched on the results from scanning earlier and said that I though I might get 10x8 as a matter of course from scans. I can explain this apparent illogical result, but it's probably off topic and would certainly raise a whole set of different issues.

So I'll end my part in this phase of the discussion by simply stating that I know what I'm seeing and stand by it.

 

[excalibur2]

I'm baffled as to why you're still banging on about this remark. Would it help if I said that I obviously have better eyesight? Not at all, actually. You've already conceded my point when you said



I'm looking and deciding whether a print is as good as it possibly could be, and you're going (I assume) with "good enough".

In any case, it's hard to see why you're baffled by my remark when you've already conceded that a larger format will give better results in the print.

I read on another forum some time ago a post where the author said that he's once been in a camera shop where the assistent showed a 20x16 print from 35mm and enthused over the quality. The author said nothing, but posted that it was obvious that said assistant had never seen a 20x16 print from a large format negative to compare. A "just noticeable difference" is just that - only noticeable as a difference between two items, and requires to have both side by side to make the comparison. The slightly inferior will only show up as such when directly compared. How many steps down does it take for the JND to become a screaming difference? I don't know. But I do know that my eyes tell me that 35mm printed over 10x8 (and very often in my experience, at 10x8!) isn't as good as it gets. This is wet printing; I touched on the results from scanning earlier and said that I though I might get 10x8 as a matter of course from scans. I can explain this apparent illogical result, but it's probably off topic and would certainly raise a whole set of different issues.

So I'll end my part in this phase of the discussion by simply stating that I know what I'm seeing and stand by it.

Well of course bigger the neg the better the quality...but the subject is prints from 35mm and my mentioning about inter comps where I saw VG 35mm prints over 8 X 10 were all dark room printing and I entered prints over 8 X 10.....a MF\LF lens is inferior to a VG 35mm lens for resolution and with drum scanning it does help to get a larger print. Anyway I'll leave this open as IMO we need someone who owns a drum scanner and also does wet printing to give his\her opinion to what can be achieved with a 35mm neg.

 

[Kei]

Here is an example of the quality achievable from a good 35mm emulsion taken using very high quality optics. This was shot on velvia 100F using an eos 3 with an adapted C/Y fit zeiss planar 85mm f1.4. Some of my shots on superior emulsions like kodachrome and the slower black and white films are better again.


A crop from the scan shows that there is detail in the weave of the ropes and the stitching in the sails visible. Medium format is better as there is less visible granularity but this shot will still print at 24"x16" with a resolution of 225ppi.

 

[excalibur2]

Well Kyle the only way to show what 35mm can do is someone to bring along a print from 8 X 10 to 12 X 16 at a meet...or maybe see an exhibition somewhere all about 35mm film.
Hey I could bring along a home A4 print from an Asda low scan.....has the detail but you have to ignore the pixels.