[Leica] silver vs pixels

[jonathan at openhealth.org (Jonathan Borden)]

dnygr wrote:

> I spent some time this week at an exhibit in which some remarkable  
> photos were displayed. There were digital and traidional silver B&W  
> prints. Common to both was that the high quality of printing that  
> had gone into them and that they were all black and white. They  
> looked first rate.
>
> The exhibit gave me a chance to compare both. From afar, both  
> looked great, but when I got up close, the digital prints didn't  
> look as great as the tradional black and whites. The edges weren't  
> as sharp and the digital prints didn't show the texture of surfaces  
> photographed as well. In the tradional black and whites, I felt I  
> could feel the grain of the wood photographed, feel the texture of  
> the tent pictured. The digital prints didn't convey this.

I used to find that something akin to this was true. This essentially  
isn't true anymore (very recently) given the most recent advances in  
digital printing i.e. the K3 inks/printers -- I use the Epson 4800  
and I also have the older 2200 -- the difference is real. There is a  
paper just about to be commercially released: Crane's Silver Rag  
which provides a  very close look to traditional air dried fiber. I  
can confidently state that every detail of a 35mm negative enlarged  
can be just as well, and in most cases *better* reproduced by digital  
inkjet printing than by conventional silver gelatin printing. You  
state that a "high quality of printing" was common to both sets of  
prints, yet this begs the question of why you don't love the digital  
prints.

Jonathan