Re: PP: Digital Grain

[Paul Stenquist]

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