Assuming, of course, that you have a film recorder capable of that resolution. 4096 pixels across a 36mm frame is about 57 lp/mm, which is a challenge. High-quality films, for example, have an MTF of 50% or less at that resolution, even if the optics are perfect.
Yes, which is exactly the point–when you reproduce quantized data in an analog medium, your goal should be to have the quantization of the data at a higher frequency than what can be recorded by the analog medium.
Most 35mm film recorders, including the one I use[1], are "4K" recorders, and image at 4096×2732 pixels to a 35mm transparency. many also have a "fast" mode which images 2048×1366 pixels. Imaging at the higher resolution, even though it exceeds the resolving power of the film, produces a visually superior image, for the same reason that printing on a press with a resolution of double the halftone screen frequency produces a visually superior image to printing at a resolution equal to the line screen frequency.
There’s a guy in the Kodak SLR forum on DPReview who is tickled with the results he’s getting shooting art with a DCS Pro 14n. There’s nothing magical about film.
There is nothing magical about film; I’m not emotionally invested in the superiority of film over digital. My comments reflect my experience.
I currently work with several fine art clients, including Charles essemer of Creative Fields Publishing[2], creating digital images intended for magazine, postcard, and fine-art lithograph reproduction.
When I first set out to create a series of digital scans of a number of paintings for this client, I took two paintings, and had the digital files made in three ways: in a studio using a Leaf Lumina medium-format digital camera, in a studio using a handheld digital camera (I don’t know what kind, though it was a very new model), and in a studio on 35mm transparency film, which was then scanned on a Hell Chromagraph drum scanner.
You can see representations of the two images I scanned online at
http://www.cfieldspub.com/fountain.html and
http://www.cfieldspub.com/ssurf.html I then had a giclee print made from each of the three digital files, and compared each print to the original.
What I found was that both digital-camera images were inferior to the drum-scanned transparency in two areas: color fidelity, and shadow detail. To be specific, both digital mages had throuble reproducing the teal tones in the image "September Surf," representing it as excessively greenish; and both digital images had difficulty with the areas of detail in the purples in the image "The Fountain."
A digital image was also created on the Leaf camera of the image found at
http://www.cfieldspub.com/gwalk.html This image was not output to giclee, as it had very poor rendition of shadow detail when compared to the drum-scanned transparency of the same image. (This is to be expected; CCDs still have poor low-level response when compared to the photomultiplier tubes used in drum scanners, and even high-end CCD-based cameras and scanners still can’t match the performance of film and PMTs[3]).
Is there anything magical about film? No; it’s just had a 100-year head start on digital, that’s all. Will digital ever catch up? Oh, most certainly; the day is coming when digital will in fact be superior to film, but that day is not today.
Is there difference significant? Depends on the user’s needs and expectations. When i showed the results of my experiments to my client, he chose the drum-scanned image both times. Since my client is extremely demanding and has demonstrated that he can distinguish a drum-scanned transparency from a digital image, I have the paintings shot on film and scan them.
The advice I gave in this thread is based on the idea that the poster was seeking the highest possible quality, which I still maintain is obtainable by film and drum scanner rather than by digital imaging. That doesn’t mean digital imaging is no good, and indeed it may very well be suitable for many, or even most, users.
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[1] I use a Montage film recorder:
http://www.bitec.com/bfilm.html [2] www.cfieldspub.com
[3] At least outside specialized scientific applications. This month’s Scientific American has an article about superconducting CCDs that are sensitive enough to respond to a single photon, making them as sensitive as PMTs, but they are still experimental, are astronomically expensive, and are useful only in certain astronomy and physics research applications.
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