digital vs film.

[payn817]

I recently got my first film camera. I didn't have prints made, instead just had them put on cd. The files look very low quality compared to my digital. The digital is 3.2 MP. The files from the photo lab are 102 dpi, and the digital is 300 dpi. Should I trust the photos on the cd from the lab, or get them printed instead?

[Sebastian]

DPI is irrelevant, you should only be looking at the vertical and horizontal pixel dimensions. I could have a 16megapixel image at 1dpi and a 3.2 megapixel image at 300 DPI and I htink you can guess which one would be higher resolution.

[ken1953]

As it was explained to me at Ritz Camera...most film processors have to manually scan the images in and most scan in for a 4x6 or less. He also told me that some places will scan in at higher resolutions, but you will have to pay extra and not many places are doing it yet, but, from cd's I've purchased at commercial places...it seems to be so! I haven't tried to get anyone to scan higher res's yet...you'll have to check into that in your area...hope this helps somewhat with your dilemna.
Ken

[another view]

You can scan film at 4000dpi (or higher) and on 35mm that would be almost 24mp (1 inch x 1.5 inches at 4000dpi). You would probably have to buy a scanner and do it yourself, but if you do enough of it and/or need that file size it might be worth it. I have an older 2700dpi scanner but I get nice 8x10 prints from 35mm from it but it will take practice to get results. On better equipment and with more experienced operators, 16x20 is possible (and larger - depends on what's acceptable to you) with 35mm.

As Sebastian says, dpi by itself is pretty much meaningless. It becomes a factor when printing but not viewing on a monitor. You're looking at pixels on a monitor, and your monitor doesn't care about inches. Prints, of course, care about inches though.

However, comparisons between film and digital made on the basis of comparing numbers to numbers don't tell you the full story. They just look different too.

[racingpinarello]

These are very low resolution scans of your negatives, and they will offer decent 4x6 prints.

Your print lab scans the negatives for the printing service, and then for $15 profit they place those same images on a photo-cd. It's meant for people to have email versions of the prints. Trust it for email, and 4x6 prints and don't use them for anything else of required quality.

If you like an image, then go to a professional scanning service to make a proper scan which should be 44mb at 8bits.

Loren

[92135011]

NO!! not another one!
(digital vs film)

[another view]

NO!! not another one!

Forgot to mention this, but seeing that thread title show up had me worried! Thought we had all of that out of our system by now - glad this isn't quite what I thought.