I suspect I will 'go digital' sometime in the next year or two and am looking forward to see any new offerings by Canon, particularly an EOS 2 type digital body. My question regards what type of print output quality I can expect from digital.
I print on an Epson 2200 at sizes of up to 13x19 inches. In reality, I tend to leave an inch margin or so around the image, so lets say an image size of 11x17 inches. "Conventional" teaching with scans (and I suppose that this could be part of the answer..that the conventional holds with scans but not direct digital acquisition) is that for critical sharpness you should be able to send 300ppi to the printer. Say this is overkill and you really only need 250 ppi. By my calculations you would still need 11 megapixels fo an 11x17 image at 250ppi. Yet everyone raves at the output of even the 10D at significantly less resolution. So is the conventional teaching incorrect when it comes to direct digital capture? Perhaps more importantly, how many megapixels are needed for an extremely sharp 11x17 inch print? I realize there are other benefits to digital capture as it translates to printing, such as lack of grain, but sharpness is quite important to me as well. I would appreciate any help in how to look at this as I think about getting a digital body. Right now I am using a 1V and a Polaroid Sprintscan 4000 Plus. A DS1 at 14 or so megapixels and full frame sensor is way too expensive for me...but if a new EOS 3 type digital body were to come out I could see spending up to $2500 or so. Howard h�X��)춻��*'�)ܖ�b� ����r��zǞ��i��0��g��a�g�j�j� �)���,�+-��
