Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2003/02/22

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Subject: RE: [Leica] Digital - Rumor Mongering apologies to Mark R.
From: "Austin Franklin" <darkroom@ix.netcom.com>
Date: Sat, 22 Feb 2003 12:44:30 -0500

B.D./Tina,

> An 11 meg file when converted to grayscale for B&W, which I do, becomes
> about a 3 to 4 meg file, which leaves very little if any room for
> manipulation...

Hum.  Just a minor point here B-)  I thought you didn't have any "problems"
with tonal manipulations (which is all you decrease by going from RGB to
grayscale, you don't lose any resolution) with 8 bit grayscale (if it were
more, then it would only help tonal manipulations)?

> particularly to produce large prints.

I'm not clear why you say that.  The number of pixels is the same...so the
quality WRT print size will be the same, whether it's 11M RGB or 11M RGB
converted to 3.66M grayscale.

> And if you get
> better gray scale files from a gray scale conversion of an image that
> started as an 11 meg color digital file than you do with what I assume
> is a 4000 dpi - or 20 meg 8 bit scan of a T-Max neg, you are doing
> something very very wrong with your T-Max.

That I completely agree with, and I was going to question that my self.  I
could only guess that because it was 400 T-Max, it had clumpy grain...

Regards,

Austin

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