one can consider a raw image from a digital camera or a drum-scanned negative/positive to be un-post-processed.
I guess noone here has ever seen a RAW image. The moment you look at a RAW image with a converter or any kind of preview programme, it is translated into something viewable (according to the default settings of that program and whatever you chose for white balancde and all).
If you shoot JPG, then this is done in-camera, with the in-camera defaults or creative programme or whatever settings. And some things like white balance you can influence while shooting.
But these settings are arbitrary! They mainly represent what whoever defined theses settings (the guys at canon, the people that wrote your converter, whoever) felt best.
The same with film, each film has it's own characterisitics. Changing film is like changeing RAW conversion settings.
So now tell me, why should I not change any of theses parameters weeks after the shooting, when I have the chance, and think my old choice was not the best. This is, strictly speaking, post-processing!
As for the Bayer-pattern sensors, they aren't in need of sharpening, they're in need to interpolating the colors recorded by various parts of the sensor. While this means that any given color can only be captured by a maximum of 50% of the sensor (green), relatively speaking, it doesn't make the images any lower in resolution.
It gives a lower resolution per colour channel, and hence a lower resolution for two channels per pixel. Interpolating dos a great job in giving the right colour-feeling, but you lose "sharpness" here. I agree this is different from the sharpness you would lose if you were slightly out of focus. It is a different thing. But it is compensated by sharpening.
Unless you use high end cameras beyond 4000 USDs, they all by default do a hell lot of sharpening when creating the jpeg, with some you cannot even switch that off properly.
The same with the RAW converters.
The resolution of a particular image is an absolute value that is limited by the number of pixels that the film/sensor can capture. There's no such thing as too many or too few pixels when you're talking optical vs capture-able pixels.
Well, we have to distinguish between the image projected onto the sensor by the optical system (resolution of the optical image), and the MP of the sensor (pixel "resolution"). Those two together are responsible for the resolution of the resulting digital image. The problem is that the term resolution is defined twice, once as how much detail is resolved in an image, and once as pixels times pixels (or more precice as ppi), the latter is something introduced with computer slang.
The resolution you see on the digital image later (as in details which can be resolved), is either mainly determined by the pixel resolution of the image (if the pixel resolution is too small), or by the optical resolution of your lens (if the pixel resolution or ppi is large enough to reproduce the details of the image projected onto the sensor).
You could produce a 20MP image with the poor resolution of a 1 MP mobile phone cam.
I usually shoot at 13 MP these days, and I use fairly high-quality lenses only, and all fine-adjusted after I bought them. The limitations in my images in terms of resolution are determined by theses lenses though (as I can clearly see!) and not by the MPs.
If I was now shooting at 40 MP, that would only increase my filesize, but not the overall resolution of my image .. the extra pixel density just does not give extra information.
But scanning at a resolution higher than the native resolution of film can never be a bad thing. Remember that pixels are measured in squares. So if you, say, double the resolution, then you're getting an image that is four times the original size. What this translates to is 4 pixels for every one that was in the original image.
Being a film guy I agree here.
I scanned tons of 35mm film, some of it fine grain pro film. I did scan at 4000ppi anyway (too lazy to translate this into MP, but it is a lot). That is well beyond what I could see as my film resolution.
I archive the scans at this resolution, with 16 bit per channel. That gives me file sizes beyond 100 MByte per scanned image. Compression is not an option, since the grain of the film is already well resolved at 4000 ppi so even smooth parts of the image with no detail (such as the blue sky) are full of film-grain detail.
NOW, it would make no sense to go to say 8000 ppi (meaning four times as many pixels and almost half a Gig of storage per image) .. since there is no more detail to be resolved better.
So, there is such a thing as too many pixels, and that is when more pixels don't store more information.
The resolution of an image on your computer is limited by the lowest-resolution piece of equipment, whether it's lens or film/sensor or scanner.
agreed.
And that, in my case, is always the lenses or the film. So going higher in sensor or scanner resolution is useless for me.
guess we basically agree here, but you should phrase it more like "always archive your digital images in the highest
sensible resolution possible, since you can always downsample depending on need".
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