Digital shooting favors stopping down only 1-2 stops after which diffraction begins to degrade image quality.
It's possible to calculate theoretical optimum aperture based on sensor well size. I don't recall the exact formula but basically the smaller the size of the individual sensor well the larger the optimum aperture becomes and the more detrimental smaller apertures are to the image. As we keep moving to higher res chips without increasing their physical size, optimum apertures get wider and wider.
I've never tested for optimum aperture very precisely but shooting critical copy work with my 14n, I can see distinctly better image quality by dimming the lights and opening up to about f/5.6 or f/8 versus using lights at a higher setting and shooting at f/16.
Bob Smith
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