Re: PP: Digital Grain

[Paul Stenquist]

Hmm, I created some jibberish here. I started out to say, "I see 
thousands of prints a month. I haven't seen an optical color print in 
years." But I meant to delete that, because it's beside the point. A 
second experiment comparing a color optical print and a color inkjet 
print would add more information. But for the purpose of comparing 
digitally recorded images and images recorded on film, everything else 
has to be as equal as possible. Of course this still isn't a valid 
scientific experiment. But I know it will demonstrate that, at least in 
terms of the way I work, there is so little difference between film and 
digital, that even experts are unable to determine which is which. For 
the way others work, that might not be true.


I'm going to show color prints from film and color prints from 
digital. I see thousands of prints a month.  I can't control the 
experiment if all the prints are not outputted  from the same source. 
The discussion here centered around a visual difference that was 
derived from the source: film vs. an optical sensor. To compare those 
two elements, you have to use the same output device. If there's more 
than one variable, it's not a controlled experiment.
Paul
On Jan 25, 2005, at 7:28 AM, William Robb wrote:

----- Original Message ----- From: "Paul Stenquist"
Subject: Re: PP: Digital Grain

People will still see what they want to see.
However, I'm going to conduct a little experiment. My current 
portfolio consists of about 48 prints. Four are 11 x 14 silver 
prints, the rest are color prints of approximately 11 x 17. Thirty 
of so are digital. Fourteen are from medium format scans. They were 
all printed on the Epson 2200. I'm going to pull aside three or four 
professional art directors in the ad agency where I'm currently 
working, along with an art buyer or two. These are people who 
evaluate professional photography every day and are considered 
experts. Let's see how many can pick out the film based prints from 
the digital without using a loupe. I'm willing to bet that the hit 
ratio will be very low indeed.
Essentially, you are going to show a bunch of digital prints and ask 
which one is not a digital print?
Hardly a fair question.
Or are you merely going to see if they can pick out the four 11x14 
silver prints from the rest.

William Robb