How does Better Light calculate MP count?

[jkuska]

How old is that thing? If it is ancient, that (only superficially impressive) figure might be brutal fact. 6000x8000 are 48MP - but with multi-pass with offset scan line, many backs can do a multiple of their native scan line resolution if you have the patience. A 144MP colour image of 274MB uncompressed size would be true 80's 16-bit with 5 bit/channel - back in the late eighties that used to be state of the art (though I don't believe that they already had 6k scan lines back then). On the other hand, 274 is close enough to the 288MB file size of 48-bit 48MP images - if it is new, they are lying or their marketing has made a mess out of their figures...

Super 6K has 18000 sensors NOT 6000, and the Super 8K has 24000 sensors NOT 8000 so the equation becomes 3x18000x8000 and 3x24000x10600 with NO interpolation, NO compression, NO anti-moire, NO anti aliasing and NO sharpening algorithms stepping all over all the data all the time trying to GUESS what it should be; just pure, clean, accurate, high information density files.

[Gordon Moat]

72mm/6000=a 12 micon sensor size for the 6K and 72mm/8000=a 9 micron sensor size for the 8K systems. ....

Unfortunately not that simple. All sensors have dead area between pixels. If it was possible to know the sensor manufacturer, and the model number of the sensor, then that information would be accessible. My guess is that their best system uses an 8µm pixel cell site size.

[jkuska]

Right, but if they're only getting 40 lp/mm, then there's no image quality advantage to using them, and many many workflow disadvantages.

You know what else can be used in basically any 4x5 view camera? Sheet film.

Sheet film, while having a Dmax of 4.0 implying a 12 stop range, only has about a 5 or 6 stop range of printable detail, BL has an 11+ stop dynamic range with printable detail basically through out. And when you are focusing which one of the many multiple layers of emulsion in the film are you focusing on and is the film ever held flat in the film holder? The tri-linear array is perfectly flat flying across a flat plane.
Can you do this with film?
http://www.betterlight.com/zoomify/zoom_bigMoney.html
Or this?
http://www.artisan-digital-services....capture-7.html
Or this?
http://www2.iath.virginia.edu/panorama/watson_uva.html
This last shot by Tom Watson was shot a 2/3 rds rez with a 6K, zoom in on the central quad and look at all of the folks sitting about and the blades of grass in the lawn.

[jkuska]

Unfortunately not that simple. All sensors have dead area between pixels. If it was possible to know the sensor manufacturer, and the model number of the sensor, then that information would be accessible. My guess is that their best system uses an 8µm pixel cell site size.

The Super 8 sensor: http://www.kodak.com/global/plugins/...uctSummary.pdf

The Super 6 sensor: http://www.kodak.com/global/plugins/...uctSummary.pdf

[sanking]

PS... Hi Sandy... it's Jerry the carbon printer and former owner of the long defunct Limited Edition Photographics

Jerry,

Are you still printing carbon on glass?

Sandy

[jkuska]

Jerry,

Are you still printing carbon on glass?

Sandy

Hi Sandy, I seldom ever printed carbon on glass, my preferred support was Melinex, the same base used by Ilford for Cibachrome. I used the single transfer method, it was challenging enough beating my head against the wall making 12 20x24's a week this way.

I don't know if you ever bothered but I authored the better part of this article on Wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_print
starting with the third sentence down "An Overview and History of Carbon (Pigment) Printing" and including the "Chronological History of Carbon (Pigment) Printing" Table at the end of this brief article and the External Links listed at the bottom.

[jkuska]

Super 6K has 18000 sensors NOT 6000, and the Super 8K has 24000 sensors NOT 8000 so the equation becomes 3x18000x8000 and 3x24000x10600 with NO interpolation, NO compression, NO anti-moire, NO anti aliasing and NO sharpening algorithms stepping all over all the data all the time trying to GUESS what it should be; just pure, clean, accurate, high information density files.

I screwed up on this one, duh! I'm dyslexic and have a distracted personality, the equations could be either 3x6000x8000 and 3x8000x10660 OR 18000x8000 and 24000x10660... typical of me, still astonishing figures in a single capture.

[sanking]

Hi Sandy, I seldom ever printed carbon on glass, my preferred support was Melinex, the same base used by Ilford for Cibachrome. I used the single transfer method, it was challenging enough beating my head against the wall making 12 20x24's a week this way.

I don't know if you ever bothered but I authored the better part of this article on Wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_print
starting with the third sentence down "An Overview and History of Carbon (Pigment) Printing" and including the "Chronological History of Carbon (Pigment) Printing" Table at the end of this brief article and the External Links listed at the bottom.

Hi Jerry,

Thanks for the information. I apologize for the misunderstanding but I had confused you with another Jerry who prints primarily on opal glass.

Regarding the BL image files you posted, do you have any technical details as to how many files were assembled to make those images I don't personally work in color so don't have any idea if this work could be done with LF color film.

However, I am fairly certain that the quality could be matched or exceeded shooting B&W separations and merging them in Photoshop. The shooting would take less time, the Photoshop work more, but it would be quite feasible, except for the shot with the people. I know this is old procedure and BL has replaced it, but with Photoshop shooting B&W separations is much more practical than it was twenty years ago.

Sandy King

[jkuska]

That makes sense.

In the BL literature it is noted that at a print size of 20" X 26.7" the resolution would be 300 spi. Since the sensor size is 72mm X 96mm (2.8" X 3.78") a print that size represents about a 7X magnification, which suggests effective resolution of around 2000 ppi, which would only be about 40 lp/mm. That sounds low to me.

Sandy King

hmmm... a capture measuring 6000x8000 pixels can be sized and resized at any resolution you want with affecting or reinterpolating any of the original data, it's just become a matter of scale. So 6000x8000 sized at 300ppi yields a print that's 20x26.7 inches then sized at 200ppi yields a print that's 30x40 inches. You choose the resolution and the output size changes accordingly so at 150ppi the print would be 40x53.4 inches and at 100ppi - 60x80 inches, but the original pixel size of the capture would always remain 6000x8000. 200ppi always produces a remarkably reasonable print off of any stochastically screened micro dot (2880x5760 at the print head) sprayed ink jet printer.

[jkuska]

Hi Jerry,

Thanks for the information. I apologize for the misunderstanding but I had confused you with another Jerry who prints primarily on opal glass.

Regarding the BL image files you posted, do you have any technical details as to how many files were assembled to make those images I don't personally work in color so don't have any idea if this work could be done with LF color film.

However, I am fairly certain that the quality could be matched or exceeded shooting B&W separations and merging them in Photoshop. The shooting would take less time, the Photoshop work more, but it would be quite feasible, except for the shot with the people. I know this is old procedure and BL has replaced it, but with Photoshop shooting B&W separations is much more practical than it was twenty years ago.

Sandy King

Well the Big Money shot is a single Super 8 capture.

The tapestry was 6ft high and 24ft long and was shot on location in 6 tiles along it's length with a Super 8 with the camera and lights traveling in a custom portable track. The tiles were later stitched together for the results you see.

The panorama on the Virgina campus was one continuous pano scan (you can pick up a few motion artifacts here and there) and the PanoAdaptor head can scan from 10° up to 400° (allowing a 40° overlap for finding a convenient stitching point) while recording a MAXIMUM of around 65000 lines of data. Now Tom shot this on Friday, April 14th 2006 at 9:12 a.m. using a 150mm lens with a Super 6 set at 62% rez for a 3750 x 49086 pixel capture with a Line Time of 1/240 and an ISO setting of 980 so that the total Scan Time was 1/240 x 49086 or 204.5 seconds OR 3 minutes and 24.5 seconds. The height to width ratio ended up at about 1:13. So 3x3750x49086=552.2175 megapixels, cool huh?