Today is a public holiday in France so I've been doing some homework. I now have an Epson R2400 printer which can make excellent black & white prints so for the past week or so I've been rolling a few off, comparing prints made from scans of B&W negatives to prints made from digital concerted to B&W.
Cruel truth no 1: An image may look good (or bad) on screen but it may look worse (or better) when you print it. This is particularly true for digital "noise" which may be visible on screen at 200% magnification but is usually invisible on an A4 print.
Cruel truth no 2: Prints made from scanned B&W film (Ilford XP2 Super) look better than prints from straight desaturation of a digital image. Everybody said the digital image was dull. I had to up the green and red filters, introduce an S-curve and increase the sharpening for the digital images to look right.
Cruel truth no 3: On an A4 (8x10) print there is no visible difference between a 6Mpix DSLR and a 10Mpix DSLR. They both look good.
Cruel truth no 4: Not all prime lenses are suited to the latest generation of DSLR's. My little 28mm f2.8 works great on the D70 but on the D200 it's left way behind by the 18-70 kit lens and the 28-70 f2.8.
Any comments on this?
My raw material:
1. Anarchists march on 1st May 2005 done on Ilford XP2 Super with Nikon F75 + 35mm f2
2. Anarchists march on 1st May 2006 done on Nikon D70 RAW + 28mm f2.8
3. Beauty queens at Church Garden Party done on Nikon D200 + 18-70 DX
Charles