Is there any good reason to be shooting larger than 4X5 is my end product is to be digital negatives for a variety of different alternative processes (i.e will I ever be data limited by the content of the film to make digital negatives up to 12x20)? I'm assuming good scans of course (drum or Imacon)....

You are always limited by the content of the negative and size.

I cannot cover it adequately here. I strongly suggest you get the book, "Making Digital Negatives for Contact Printing" by Dan Burkholder. It will answer all your questions. In my experience, people reading on how to do it right go right back to Analog - fast.

I've read Burkholder and Nelson in detail and spent some time making digital negatives. My experience has been that 4X5 is more than adequate - a cheap 2000DPI drum scan from a 4x5 negative has much more than I've ever needed for a digital negative. That said, I much prefer in camera negatives and consequently have a range of cameras from 4X5 to 12x20....

You are always limited by the content of the negative and size.

I cannot cover it adequately here. I strongly suggest you get the book, "Making Digital Negatives for Contact Printing" by Dan Burkholder. It will answer all your questions. In my experience, people reading on how to do it right go right back to Analog - fast.

The only person I know doing this, whose work I've seen uses MF for 8x10 negs made from a LightJet film burner. He does contact liths...

Knowing the image size requirements for inkjet printers I am hard pressed to believe that you would need anything larger than 4x5 (or even MF),

Most of my digital negatives so far started out life as 4x5 negatives. If your final image size is no bigger than 8X10 or so, you can get away with a flat bed scan of the sheet film negative. Why spend the money on a drum scan if the fine details get lost in the paper surface?

You can make digital negatives at 300 dpi for alt processes. You can figure out the math from there.

This thread should be moved to the digital negative forum.

Knowing the image size requirements for inkjet printers I am hard pressed to believe that you would need anything larger than 4x5 (or even MF),
I think the process he is speaking of is to make digital negatives for conventional contact printing. In any case, one uses a process camera to make something like a half-tone (something like a bitmap image with stochastic resampling in one case) from the original print - however that is made is another story. Enlarging is done to the output film strictly for contacting later.

I know what he is talking about.

This thread should be moved to the digital negative forum.

Done, Thanks Joe

Is there any good reason to be shooting larger than 4X5 is my end product is to be digital negatives for a variety of different alternative processes (i.e will I ever be data limited by the content of the film to make digital negatives up to 12x20)? I'm assuming good scans of course (drum or Imacon)....

It really all depends on how many magnifications will be given to the original negative, the type of scan you are capable of making (which includes both hardware and individual skill if doing this yourself), how your digital negative will be printed, and the resolution of the printing process.

If the objective is to make a print from an enlarged digital negative that is *virtually* equal in image quality to one made from an in-camera negative my own experience suggests that about 3X is the most you can go if scanning with a flat-bed scanner and printing your digital negatives on an inkjet printer such as the Epson 2200 or 2400. If scanning with a higher level scanner and printing on continuous tone material with a laser jet or LED printer you can probably go 4X, maybe up to 6X with 35mm or medium format negatives exposed with the camera on a tripod.

Sandy