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Originally Posted by RossJarvis  It intrigues me that you say that silver images are better than digital on the very small level as my own understanding makes me feel that the ability of digital to record tone at a micro level should actually be the opposite. maybe the technology and software lags behind the potential of the process. |
I don't think it's the technology or software. I think it has to do with several factors including 1) the Bayer interpolation, which causes an effective bleeding of exposure information into neighboring pixels, 2) the antialiasing filters that are necessary to prevent moire, and 3) the generally lower resolution per unit area of digital sensors than film emulsions. Practically speaking this difference is overcome by the lossiness of scanning or enlarging; but the highest resolution DSLR in pixel density, the Nikon D2X, has a theoretical maximum resolution of 89 lp/mm and the vaunted Canon 5D has a theoretical maximum resolution of only 61 lp/mm (because it has 61 photosite pairs per mm). This is probably never achieved in practice.