Maybe the apparent lack of colour variations in the bricks in Paul's images is actually due to the fact that this is down at the pixel level. AFAIK, with image chips in digital SLRs and compacts the colour is produced by the software from arrays of four pixels with colour filters over them, so the colour information has a lower resolution than the actual number of pixels. Film of course has separate colour-sensitive layers with the grains spread across at random. The microstructure of a film image shows cyan, magenta and yellow grains that combine to give the correct colour. The actual grains, I think, are smaller than the clumping that we perceive as grain. So with film we see a grainy image of the right colour, while with a digital image at the microstructure level we just see a rather blurry image that has the correct average colour.
It is presumably for the same reason that a digital file of, say, a blue sky has much less colour variation than a film image, so the apparent graininess is lower, allowing us to get away with larger prints. If this is the case, I'd expect a closeup of the same bricks (or for that matter a test chart) to be reproduced faithfully in terms of colour by either system. The colour would be spread out over many pixels in the case of the digital chip, and should be reproduced accurately. I find that my astro shots of stars show the same effect. On film, the star colours reproduce nicely (where the film is not saturated), but faint star images on the 10D tend to reproduce as white. On the other hand, if I am talking rubbish, I'm sure someone will tell me so! Robin Scagell Galaxy Picture Library www.galaxypix.com =============================================================== GO TO http://www.prodig.org for ~ GUIDELINES ~ un/SUBSCRIBING ~ ITEMS for SALE
