Re: Epson coated paper negatives

FotoDave (FotoDave@aol.com)
Sat, 25 Apr 1998 21:06:22 -0400 (EDT)

<< Since I need a 7X loupe to just barely see the dots (no screen pattern like
the 800) from the previous Photo Stylus, this is getting interesting. Macs and
Wintel drivers are available. >>

I have nothing against digital imaging (I am a computer engineer, and it is
very easy
for me to generate digital negatives with correct tones), but my opinion is
that a dot is a dot is a dot. One can use it to quickly generate some
negatives for some processes but dots cannot provide the relief that a carbon
print made from continous-tone negative has.

And one issue that we haven't really talked about a lot (or at all) is how
fine a resolution your process can resolve. Remember that we are hand coating
our emulsion. No matter good we think we can coat, the coating is not done by
machine or through some chemical process, so there will be unevenness in our
coating, so it might not be able to resolve the higher resolution. Take for
example, just 600 dpi, each dot size is 1/600 inch, or about 0.04 mm! To truly
be able to print that, your coating must be able to resolve half of that, or
0.02mm.

So depending on the process, we might reach a point where increased resolution
in the printer might not help anymore. The situation is like using a very high
resolution imagesetter to generate a negative (or print) and then use it for
xeroxing. The xerox cannot be good no matter how high the resolution of the
imagesetter is. The extra fine resolution won't help because now the
limitation is on the xerox machine but not on the fineness of the output of
the imagesetter.

Dave S.