Film vs. Scanning resolution

138S · Aug 27, 2020

Team ADOX said:
And at such low to moderate contrasts films like for example HR-50, TMX, Delta 100, Provia 100F, Velvia 50 / 100 etc. achieve resolution values in the 120 to 150 lp/mm range (depending on the used lens).

This is the 1000:1 graph from Provia datasheet, I painted the extension to 140 and a possible 1.6:1 curve.

Note that at 1000:1 contrast and only 50cy/mm 70% is already destroyed. Any pictorial situation will lay between the 1.6:1 and the 1000:1 curve, but even at 1000:1 by 50cy/mm most of the quality is destroyed. IMO one thing is the technical capability to resolve an another thing is what is worth for pictorial usage.

138S · Aug 27, 2020

Lachlan Young said:
If you'd read the segment on plate coating you'd know that you would not be able to coat a supercoating layer on the machine if T-Max 100 was multilayer.

We are talking about film, not glass plates.

In color film each color layer may have 3 separated layers (Fast+Medium+Slow) , totalling 9 sensitive layers.

See page 30: https://www.kodak.com/uploadedfiles...wsletters_filmEss_04_How-film-makes-image.pdf

And you say that TMX has a single layer because of glass plates ? Is this the evidence ?

Lachlan Young · Aug 27, 2020

Alan Edward Klein said:
How would these features show up in my photography? What would it look different to a person who didn't know what film I used?

Viewers don't care about how hard you worked - but it's how you feel about the aesthetic that matters. Do you want low granularity/ high sharpness/ fairly 'smooth' look, or do you want a crunchier, grittier look? How you use the material will define how people view it, not what material you used.

Lachlan Young · Aug 27, 2020

138S said:
We are talking about film, not glass plates.

In color film each color layer may have 3 separated layers (Fast+Medium+Slow) , totalling 9 sensitive layers.

View attachment 253347

See page 30: https://www.kodak.com/uploadedfiles...wsletters_filmEss_04_How-film-makes-image.pdf

And you say that TMX has a single layer because glass plates ? Is this the evidence ?

You are once again demonstrating that you read about 10% of the books you try to quote & understand even less.

The segment on plate coating describes the machine used until 2003 - and describes most packages as a single layer of AgX and a topcoat. If T-Max 100 had needed to be specially re-engineered for this coater, it would have been mentioned, especially as its other manufacturing eccentricities are mentioned elsewhere. Relative to the potential demand involved, T-Max 100 would have required major re-engineering to work on glass if it was a fully multilayer emulsion owing to the significant photo engineering problems this would have thrown up. For the demand at the time for specialist plates, such a level of re-engineering would have been probably deeply unlikely. If on the other hand, some small modifications to the extant slide-hopper coating package for T-Max 100 would make it coatable on prepared glass, then that would have been a more sensible business proposition. It is basic photo system engineering that you should coat in the least possible number of layers unless there are very strong reasons not to do so (equilibration and its effect on keeping for example). The whole point of T-Max 100 was to replace Panatomic-X (and a bunch of technical films) and compete with APX 25 etc. For those sorts of purposes the thinner you could make the emulsion layer, the better.

Les Sarile · Aug 27, 2020

138S said:
There is a way

Alan Edward Klein said:
That's a terrific scan Les. How did you do it? What settings?

I am sure the content will make any technical shortcoming invisible.
Simply put the big negative directly on the glass, select bw and scan.

138S · Aug 27, 2020

Lachlan Young said:
You are once again demonstrating that you read about 10% of the books you try to quote & understand even less.

The segment on plate coating describes the machine used until 2003 - and describes most packages as a single layer of AgX and a topcoat. If T-Max 100 had needed to be specially re-engineered for this coater, it would have been mentioned, especially as its other manufacturing eccentricities are mentioned elsewhere. Relative to the potential demand involved, T-Max 100 would have required major re-engineering to work on glass if it was a fully multilayer emulsion. For the demand at the time for specialist plates, that would have been deeply unlikely. If on the other hand, some small modifications to the extant slide-hopper coating package for T-Max 100 would make it coatable on prepared glass, then that would have been a more sensible business proposition. It is basic photo system engineering that you should coat in the least possible number of layers unless there are very strong reasons not to do so (equilibration and its effect on keeping for example).

You are guessing... Why kodak has to mention you if they used a blended emulsion variant or not for coating glass plates ?

Look, multi layer is basic technology to obtain a large linear latitude like the one TMX sports, it would have been kafkian if Kodak had to renounce to those benefits for TMX because of some glass plates they were also selling. Lachlan, sorry, but IMO this is hilarating...

See the TMY cross section, for sure (don't doubt it) TMX also has a cubic component for linear large latitude in the highlight, if you blend the two components that horizontal aligment of the T crystals would be a chaos. IMO your single layer coating of TMX is an elocubration without base, rumorology.

My view is that the double layer adds incredible performance to TMX, and that Kodak won't sacrifice that easy after developing the 9 sensitive layers for color. If you have a true evidence please post it, with the reference document and the author.

Still we both lack true evidence, you are making a guess from glass plates and I guess that it would have been a big pitfall if Kodak blended the emulsion.

I asked PE this, but at that time he was not well, very sadly.

Lachlan Young said:
You are once again demonstrating that you read about 10% of the books you try to quote & understand even less.

are you a gentleman or not? be polite

Lachlan Young · Aug 27, 2020

138S said:
You are guessing... Why kodak has to mention you if they used a blended emulsion variant or not for coating glass plates ?

Look, multi layer is basic technology to obtain a large linear latitude like the one TMX sports, it would have been kafkian if Kodak had to renounce to those benefits for TMX because of some glass plates they were also selling. Lachlan, sorry, but this is hilarating Aren't you joking ?

See the TMY cross section, for sure (don't doubt it) TMX also has a cubic component for linear large latitude in the highlight, if you blend the two components that horizontal aligment of the T crystals would be a chaos. IMO your single layer coating of TMX is an elocubration without base, rumorology.

My view is that the double layer adds incredible performance to TMX, and that Kodak won't sacrifice that easy after developing the 9 sensitive layers for color. If you have a true evidence please post it, with the reference document and the author.

View attachment 253351

Again, you have very limited understanding of Photo System Engineering. You have repetitiously failed to disprove that much.

Read Ron's comments about photo system engineering very very carefully. You never use an extra layer unless you absolutely must. There is almost certainly no need to do so with T-Max 100, but there is with T-Max 400 and T-Max 3200. If T-Max 400 could have been made as a single layer, it would have been. T-Max 400 in its current version is rather more innovative than most of its predecessors - it attempts to give the benefits of both 3D and flat grain emulsions. It is however inaccurate to extrapolate from the behaviour and grain structure of T-Max 400 to either T-Max 3200 or T-Max 100.

And read pg.24 and footnote 23 on the same page of Bob's book, it refers clearly to the 'light sensitive layer' of T-Max 100, while referring to 'light sensitive layers' of other films.

Alan Edward Klein · Aug 27, 2020

What is 3D emulsion in Tmax 400?

Lachlan Young · Aug 27, 2020

Alan Edward Klein said:
What is 3D emulsion in Tmax 400?

Tabular Grains are flat (high aspect ratio)

3D-grains can be cubic, octahedral etc - they aren't flat. They're what people (wrongly) call 'traditional grain' - they're just as constructed in manufacture as tabular grain structures.

If you go to the Emulsion Making subforum & read Ron Mowrey's (Photo Engineer) posts on Photo System Engineering, it's all explained concisely and precisely there.

138S · Aug 27, 2020

Lachlan Young said:
You never use an extra layer unless you absolutely must.

If TMX was single layer it would be the single pictorial Kodak product having a single layer.

All color films are multi layer, many sporting 9 sensitive layers. Ektachome... TMY, TMZ, TX and TXP are also multi layer. Why TMX has to be single layer ?

First, realize that the extra layer is an absolutely must to yield that insane linearity in the highlights:

1) The separated cubic layer efficiently prevents most of the infectious development from high sensitive T-Grains to the slow cubic blocks, preventing an early shouldering. Don't tell me you were not aware.

2) Placing the slow emulsion in the back makes it even slower from the casted shadows, which favors linearity in the extreme highlights, and this also favors linearity in the shadows because no low speed cubic blocks are casting shadows on the fast crystals.

3) If the cubic and T were blended then horizontal alignment of the T crystals would be lost, making the T emulsion less sensitive for the same silver amount and from the same grain (clumps) size.

Kodak engineers, with great effort, refined all the physics to place T crystals horizontal to catch well light and now you want to place all the T grains in arbitrary directions. Quite funny

Still, nothing is imposible, so just bring a reliable evidence of your weird statement, if TMX is the only film coated in a single sensitive layer this would stated somewhere, isn't it ?

To me, single doubt is Double-X, still sold for motion pictures.

Lachlan Young · Aug 27, 2020

138S said:
If TMX was single layer it would be the single pictorial Kodak product having a single layer.

All color films are multi layer, many sporting 9 sensitive layers. Ektachome... TMY, TMZ, TX and TXP are also multi layer. Why TMX has to be single layer ?

Let me use your words: "Again, you have very limited understanding of Photo System Engineering. You have repetitiously failed to disprove that much."

First you don't realize that the extra layer is an absolutely must to yield that insane linearity in the highlights:

1) The separated cubic layer efficiently prevents most of the infectious development from high sensitive T-Grains to the slow cubic blocks, preventing an early shouldering. Don't tell me you were not aware.

2) Placing the slow emulsion in the back makes it even slower from the casted shadows, which favors linearity in the extreme highlights, and this also favors linearity in the shadows because no low speed cubic blocks are casting shadows on the fast crystals.

3) If the cubic and T were blended then horizontal alignment of the T crystals would be lost, making the T emulsion less sensitive for the same silver amount and from the same grain (clumps) size.

Kodak engineers, with great effort, refined all the physics to place T crystals horizontal to catch well light and now you want to place all the T grains in arbitrary directions. Quite funny

Man, look, T emulsions are not much compatible with single layer coating.

Still, nothing is imposible, so just bring a reliable evidence of your weird statement, if TMX is the only film coated in a single sensitive layer this would stated somewhere, isn't it ?

To me, single doubt is Double-X, still sold for motion pictures.

Again all you're showing off is how very little you are aware of the actualities of the materials - and attempting to dress up that profound lack of knowledge with bumptious attitude. With modern crystal growth techniques you can make pretty much any curve shape you need - crystal characteristics can be used to define contrast behaviour - highly monodisperse cubic emulsions can deliver very high contrast.

And as for layers, the higher energy photons will penetrate further to reach the slower emulsion, whose controlled higher inherent contrast (from the inherent crystal characteristics) will allow the curve to stay straight rather than shoulder out, keeping the highlights separated. You are also seemingly fundamentally unaware of the way that emulsions are further modified in the finish steps to be able to control their behaviour through additions of restrainers, accelerators, sensitisers etc. And as for the garbage about infectious development, sounds like you've never actually seen it in action. If it did what you seem to be deluding yourself into believing, it would happen in a really weird way causing massive tonal breakup in the neg.

And in a T-grain film (if you had done the barest minimum of research) you would know that the whole point of T-grain technique is to be able to grow them to rigourously maintain their planar behaviour and tight packing, even when being blended with other T-grain emulsions etc. The whole point is that they are designed to stay in the positions shown in the cross section. Somehow you seem to think that T-grains flap about every which way in melted emulsion...

138S · Aug 27, 2020

Lachlan Young said:
Again all you're showing off is how very little you are aware of the actualities of the materials - and attempting to dress up that profound lack of knowledge with bumptious attitude. With modern crystal growth techniques you can make pretty much any curve shape you need ...

So... why TMY, TMZ, TX, TXP, Potra 160, 400, 800, Ektachrome, ColorPlus 200, Pro Image 100, Gold 200 and Ultramax 400 all have multi layers and not TMX ? Those color films have two or three layers for each color... Why TMX is the rare exception ?

12 films multilayer but not TMX ? Are you sure ?

What about the infectious development provocating the early shouldering if not having two layers ?

Helge · Aug 27, 2020

138S said:
Why TMX is the rare exception ?

Because it’s not a colour film.

In the late seventies/early eighties researchers at Kodak succeeded in making single layer Kodachrome.
It’s was a tiny bit grainier than the usual stuff, but sharper, cheaper and simpler to develop.
They didn’t release it for a number of reasons unfortunately.
Why am I writing this?
That research was not for naught.
When tablet grain arrived some of those ideas went into the VR and T-Max films

grat · Aug 27, 2020

Helge said:
Because it’s not a colour film.

In the late seventies/early eighties researchers at Kodak succeeded in making single layer Kodachrome.
It’s was a tiny bit grainier than the usual stuff, but sharper, cheaper and simpler to develop.

Any idea if Kodak Alaris owns the IP for that development? Might be a path to bring back Kodachrome, and would be phenomenal for Kodak's image.

MattKing · Aug 27, 2020

Kodak Alaris only owns marketing rights.
Eastman Kodak owns any IT - unless they sold it before or during the bankruptcy.

grat · Aug 28, 2020

Ah. Wasn't sure who owned what.

Still, resurrecting Kodachrome would be a huge plus, and they do keep muttering about it.

MattKing · Aug 28, 2020

grat said:
Still, resurrecting Kodachrome would be a huge plus, and they do keep muttering about it.

May Ron RIP

MattKing · Aug 28, 2020

By the way, the Kodachrome patent was released to the public domain.

138S · Aug 28, 2020

Helge said:
Because it’s not a colour film.

Helge, TMY, TX/TXP for sure (and probably TMZ) are made in two emulsion layers and they are not color films... To me it's quite hard to belive that for TMX Kodak renounced to double layer emulsion, because that insane latitude/linearity would be hard to obtain with a single layer.

Helge · Aug 28, 2020

138S said:
Helge, TMY, TX/TXP for sure (and probably TMZ) are made in two emulsion layers and they are not color films... To me it's quite hard to belive that for TMX Kodak renounced to double layer emulsion, because that insane latitude/linearity would be hard to obtain with a single layer.

if you want ultimate sharpness/resolution it’s quite natural.
That enormous resolution of T-MAX 100 and CMS 20 II probably wouldn’t be possible with multiple layers.

138S · Aug 28, 2020

Helge said:
That enormous resolution of T-MAX and CMS 20 II probably wouldn’t be possible with multiple layers.

Helge, CMS 20 should be single emulsion layer because it is a monodisperse emulsion, crystals are all of similar size, so it makes no sense having two layers as the two layers would contain the same. The monodisperse size delivers a very narrow latitude that has to be boosted with an special low contrast developer because it tends to deliver pure black or pure white with no gradation in the middle, it is Agfa COPEX series microfilm intended to make microfiches or the like, ultra low speed to deliver (datasheet says) 800 Line Pairs per mm performance (at high contrast) which is a crazy amount, but wanting pure black or pure white for sharp texts and drawings in the microfiche.

Coating two (or three) sensitive layers with different speeds/natures, one over the other, is a technique to get a larger latitude and (probably) a more linear sensitometric curve in the toe and/or in the shoulder. At least Kodak states that, to increase latitude, they use 3 layers of different speeds (Fast-Med-Slow) for each color, totalling up to 9 layers to record the three colors.

Well, ADOX CMS 20 for sure it's a pain to use, but it always ends deliverring an amazing set of beautiful images, and of course it records an icredible amount of detail, we all have the the Porsche slide !!

I downloading the full res image... this rivals to many LF shots ! Incredible !

Speaking about the OP's Thread Topic, this deserves a Flextight or drum scan, it is a particular case where a great scanner makes a great difference for a large print, that 35mm slide can be printed very big with total quality.

https://www.adox.de/Photo/cms-20-reversal-processed-slide/

Team ADOX · Aug 28, 2020

138S said:
This is the 1000:1 graph from Provia datasheet, I painted the extension to 140 and a possible 1.6:1 curve.
...........

As already explained several times, please do not overrate these data sheets. You cannot transfer them 1:1 into real pictures.
With your example here with Provia 100F, we can ensure you that the final results concerning resolution will look better as it would be expected from the datasheet. Fujifilm is in general a bit conservative (underrating) with the data.
In the R&D process for our ADOX Scala 50 several comparison tests with Provia 100F and Velvia 50 / 100 has been done. And we've been a bit surprised how good the resolution performance of the Fujichromes have been (better than expected, and our expectations have been high).
Fortunately the Scala 50 also performed even a bit better than expected , surpassing Velvia 50 by a slight margin in our resolution test.

Another real test example made by Carl Zeiss: In one of their tests they have got 170 lp/mm with Velvia 100 at medium object contrast. So even more than Fujifilm's data sheet value for high contrast (160 lp/mm).

ADOX - Innovation in Analog Photography.

Alan Edward Klein · Aug 28, 2020

Helge said:
if you want ultimate sharpness/resolution it’s quite natural.
That enormous resolution of T-MAX 100 and CMS 20 II probably wouldn’t be possible with multiple layers.

Comparing Tmax 100 and Tmax 400, how large an print would there have to be to see practical differences in resolution, tones, or anything else?

Team ADOX · Aug 28, 2020

138S said:
I downloading the full res image... this rivals to many LF shots ! Incredible !

Speaking about the OP's Thread Topic, this deserves a Flextight or drum scan, it is a particular case where a great scanner makes a great difference for a large print, that 35mm slide can be printed very big with total quality.

https://www.adox.de/Photo/cms-20-reversal-processed-slide/

You can enlarge 35mm ADOX CMS 20 II as big as you want. If you look at it under a microscope with 100X enlargement factor (would be a 2.4 x 3.6 meter image) it delivers perfect sharpness, incredible resolution and still very fine grain.
And as you increase the distance to the picture for viewing the bigger the picture is enlarged, there is no limit for enlargement of this film in real viewing situations. We've projected it on walls with 6 meter width, and you can still see the finest details from only 40cm viewing distance.

The two scans on our homepage are drumscans made by www.high-end-scans.de. The leading drumscan service for professional customers in Germany.
But to keep the file size manageable for web presentation, the choosen scan resolution was not at its technical maximum.
The pictures are unplanned handheld snapshots made by Henning Serger on a classic car meeting. He was the first to make tests with reversal development of CMS 20 II. And he succeeded (honestly, we had our doubts that it will work because of the extremely thin emulsion layer, and we were surprised by the very good results). Good to have brave customers who are thinking "out of the box" .

ADOX - Innovation in Analog Photography.

flavio81 · Aug 28, 2020

grat said:
Even though I have a lowly v800 (I guess the useful discussion is over, may as well descend into irrelevance and await Godwin's arrival), "smear" isn't something I associate with the output. That sounds like poorly focused scanning (the lack of adjustable focus is a serious oversight on these things, personal opinion), or badly processed images.

Can you provide an example? I've seen a number of 120 film scans of very high quality done with an Epson. I

I don't want to be rude, but perhaps you haven't had the experience of projecting 120 film on a screen, or doing a sizeable (say, 11x14" or bigger) optical enlargement of a 6x7 negative with a decent schneider, rodenstock or Nikkor enlarging lens. Because the end picture you get isn't "good" or "acceptable"; it is better described as "stunning".

This should be the standard, and every, every scan I have seen from Epson flatbeds falls very short of this standard. Not only in resolution, but also in contrast, and in lack of sharpness because of detail smear due to halos or chromatic aberrations from the scanning lens.

As for examples, there are plenty of examples comparing Epson flatbed scan (all models around) versus FF DSLR scanning; the difference is not even funny.

You scan a 120 film with a flatbed, the ending result might as well have been produced with a mediocre 35mm film with good scanning equipment.

Film vs. Scanning resolution

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