[Leica] film resolution

[freakscene at weirdness.com (Marty Deveney)]

>Sometime ago, some goofball said that Neopan 1600 was just as sharp  
>as Neopan 400.
>Well, after I spewed my morning tea reading that, I went on a search  
>for the lp/mm for those two films.
>I haven't been able to find any references to that.
>Anyone know where I can find them?

Kodak are unusually helpful with regard to their products.  You can find 
resolution data with developer, time and CI for most of their products 
(resolution is affected by CI and you may note that 'ultra-resolution' films 
that quote incredibly high lp/mm extinction values are usually derived from 
negatives developed to contrast levels way past that which you could 
effectively print or scan for a pictorial effect) and granularity expressed 
as RMS - certainly for all the films I have been interested in.  Fuji are 
not very helpful in this regard and don't publish these data.  Some useful 
comparative data are here: http://cacreeks.com/films.htm but the data is 
deficient for Neopan 1600.

The difficulty in assessing 'sharpness' is that it is a combination of 
resolution, contrast, granularity and other characteristics.  Comparing 
between films can be tricky.

I like the way Mr Honda explains resolution here: 
http://www.stockphotoonline.com/C01_NotesOnPhotography/Resolution.htm

Having said that - looking at some 8x10s and 11x14s in front of me right 
now, none of my photos on Neopan 1600 look anything like as sharp to me as 
ones on Neopan 400.  Acros appears to beat everything, including APX25, the 
slow Efke films, TMX and Delta 100.  These photos of mine are all developed 
in relatively standard developers; in a special glycin or catechol developer 
suited to a particular film, I have no idea what the resolution results 
would be.  I know that whenever I have tried super-sharpness developers 
tonality suffered.  I regard tonality more highly than subjective sharpness.

I think Fuji are working on the principle that lp/mm extinction values, RMS 
and many other measurable factors don't help us take better photos.  Kodak 
are working on the principle that they have done a lot of research on their 
own products and want it to be available to consumers.

Marty


Gallery:
http://gallery.leica-users.org/main.php?g2_itemId=7617

Most people can only judge of things by the experiences of ordinary life, 
but phenomena outside the scope of this are really quite numerous.
        Shen Kuo - 'Dream Pool Essays'


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