Digital Negatives

[octagon]

Sir:
There has been recent discussion about digital negatives. I am mostly interested in cleaning up dust and flaws. I plan to contact print up to 16x20. If I have the file printed on a good imagesetter (say 3600 dpi) will the resulting silver print be as good or better than a print developed from an enlarged 4x5 film negative? Any thoughts on the subject would be appreciated.
Jerry Cunningham

[Larry Gebhardt]

Jerry an image setter at 3600 dpi will give you about 225ppi if you use a 16x16 grid to get 256 gray levels. This should look very good. You could get more resolution by going to a 12x12 grid which will get you to 300 ppi. This should look almost as good as a well made conventional 16x20, but it will look better than one with dust and flaws. If you were to make a new 4x5 on a film recorder to print from I think the contact printed image setter neg will look much better.