Difference between optical prints and digital prints?

[AFairley]

You know how audiophiles talk about the sound superiority of analog recordings to digital recordings (in terms that remind me of people talking about wines).  Has anyone come across any writings, etc. on the topic with regards to optical (i.e. prints from film onto light sensitive paper via optical enlargement or contact printing) v. negative scans inkjet printed v. digital originals inkjet printed.  Just curious.

[hjulenissen]

All too many audiophiles are lunatics wanting to be suckered by an all too willing industry... :-)

For wine there actually exists blind tests, meaning that there is some sense.

I would check out the websites of R.N. Clark and Norman Koren.
http://clarkvision.com/articles/index.html#part_8
http://www.normankoren.com/

-h

[Gary Brown]

Has anyone come across any writings, etc. on the topic with regards to optical (i.e. prints from film onto light sensitive paper via optical enlargement or contact printing) v. negative scans inkjet printed v. digital originals inkjet printed.  Just curious.

Here's a very long but interesting one by Ctein: A Perfunctory Guide to Converting Photographic Film to Digital Prints, Part I, then Part II and Part III.

To quote from the beginning of Part I:

“Many are convinced that it's impossible to obtain satisfactory digital prints from photographic film. Or, conversely, satisfactory traditional (a.k.a. darkroom a.k.a. analog) prints from digital files. Neither happens to be true. In fact, many accomplished printers are successfully ‘coloring outside the lines.’ I will go so far as to say that in the hands of a skilled printer, a better print can often be made from film digitally than can be made in the darkroom unless one takes extraordinary measures. For some photographs, digital printing will exceed the very best darkroom prints.”

[NikoJorj]

You know how audiophiles talk about the sound superiority of analog recordings to digital recordings

Interesting topic! I think I'm going to sell gold-plated printer cables.  

For the scanned film vs. digital capture debate, it was actually a bit fin de siècle, and has been covered  in length since ; see the (excellent) aforementioned websites.

To get more on the A/D debate, you could compare a completely analog print vs. completely digital one. An example is here, but analog is at its best (contact print means huge capture area compared to digital sensors or post stamp-sized prints, and B&W is an area less favorable to digital as color) ; comparison on a big print, made of an enlarged negative on the analog side, would probably yield quite different results. (in the analog times, John Szarkowski is said to have said something like "with virtuoso technique, large prints can look almost as good as small ones").

[mfryd]

The conversion from film to digital or digital to film is technically challenging.   The grain of the film seldom lines up with the pixels in the digital image.    The different technologies have different strengths (one is better at highlight detail, one is better at shadow detail).   Unless one is careful, you can lose a lot of quality scanning a negative, or making a negative from a digital file.

As a general rule, if your final print will be a digital print, your life will be easier if you start with a digital image.

If your final print will be an optical wet print in a darkroom, there are advantages to film.


These are of course generalities.  It's quite possible to get excellent results from scanned film, or negatives made from digital.  it's just not as easy as being pure analog or pure digital.