Quote:
Originally Posted by roteague  However, sensors in digital cameras are also analog devices. It is the A/D converter that makes it digital. |
this point along with maybe an incomplete understanding of graphs is what got me wondering initially.
If we consider a black and white print as a graph with an x and y axis, we can consider the image made of black points, given positions on this graph. The density of points gives us tone which we perceive as an image. As we look at this image which is purely 2 dimensionsal (ignoring the fact that silver grains have thickness too!) our brains can perceive depth, usually caused by shadow tone and highlight, plus perceived position creating depth in the image. The image is "digital" in that the tones are formed from black points (on or off) on a white field (the opposite to whatever we assign to the black bits).
In my mind I considered a digital sensor as this two dimensional field where the sensors were positioned via the x y axies, however as the sensors can record tone too, how do we represent this in graphical terms. (We could ignore a value for colour as maybe this could be attributed to different positions related to different colours). In my mind a value for tone would have to come into the z axis, therefore being out into the third dimension.
Could this bring something into a black and white image which cannot be achieved by black or not points? Particularly when it comes to putting the image onto paper. My mind wondered if using tone, in tone based inks rather than perceived tone created by a ratio of black to white, we may perceive a form of depth or position so far denied to us.
The conclusion I am coming to is no! So thank you very much, digital offers nothing we don't have in analogue and I can rub my hands gleefully whilst buying up lots of kit which I couldn't afford before all those people went digitalist and flogged it off cheap.