OrionWorks wrote:
> I once estimated that a fairly good 35 mm print had about 16
mega-pixels of data,
> based on a high resolution scan I made of it.
This may be an incorrect assumption.
According to Ctein, a professional photographer who specializes in the
dyeing art of dye transfer, the crossover point is closer to around 12
megapixels.
I used crude methods, basically counting spots that I thought were
the same color in the largest zoomed in image I could make with the
Hewlett-Packard scanner. (Incidentally, this scanner makes a
remarkably good microscope when you set the resolution for 2400.) My
results could indicate 12 megapixels instead of 16. Also, there are
different grades of film and some have smaller grains than than others.
That was with a print (a positive) not the negative.
There was an argument about this somewhere on the Internet, and some
film-camera buffs asserted that the correct answers 30 to 40
megapixels, as I recall. That seemed too high to me, so I did a rough estimate.
Film technology has not reached its final development by any means.
See, for example, the Gigapxl Project (http://www.gigapxl.org/).
Perhas these advances are being spurred by digital photography, to
some extent. As Christensen and I pointed out in our respective
books, new technology often forces a final flowering of the older
technology. For example, in the 1950s movie projector technology was
improved to make movies much better than television, in an attempt to
lure audiences out of the house and back into the theater. They
developed Cinamascope gigantic round screens, which are impressive,
and three-dimensional movies, which were not.
My favorite example was the development of high performance, high
speed sailing ships (clipper ships) in response to the development of
steamships. Clipper ships could not have sailed without the
assistance of steam tugboats, but they enjoyed only a brief heyday,
because reliable long-range ocean-going steamships soon surpassed them.
Many technologies remain competitive longer than we remember.
Horse-drawn transportation in the U.S. peaked in 1929, long after
millions of cars were on the road. The German armies of WWII relied
mainly on horse-drawn transport. Motorized Panzer divisions were the
elite. (The US and the UK were much more motorized, which was not
always an advantage.) We are used to seeing progress in computers,
and this has been swifter and more relentless than the norm -- a
one-way street, you might say. There may also be somewhat less
resistance to technology these days, although there remains
tremendous resistance to fundamental research, as everyone involved
with cold fusion knows. The Ballad of John Henry was a myth -- the
real John Henry was happy to operate a steam driven rail-setting
machine. But it is interesting that the myth arose in the first
place. As Arthur Clarke pointed out, there was never an equivalent
myth of a mathematician pitted against ENIAC who died with a slide
rule in his hands.
- Jed
