Web Photos

[Scott]

For a long time I have been assuming that photos will look better in a
print then on the computer screen, lately I have started to question
this. One of the things I hear a lot is that a given camera is ok for
photos that will be viewed on the web, the part that is assumed from
this is that it would not be good enough for producing prints.

First off I should say that I think a camera needs to be pretty good to
produce really good looking photos from posting on the web, at least is
they are of any size. Digital photos always look a bit soft when view
at 100% and to get a really sharp looking photos you need to down
sample just a bit, how much depends on the camera. I have to down
sample a lot more with my Sony F828 then I do with my Canon 20D, but to
get the sharpest looking photo even the 20D needs to be down sample,
just a bit.

What surprises me it looking at a photo on the screen and at a print of
the same photo, often the screen version looks much better, this is
particularly true for my prints from film.

When I was shooting a lot of film I got the prints made at 3.5 x 5
inches, as did a lot of people at that time. When I compare the print
to the same photo on my screen the one on the screen looks much better.
I am using a film scanner to capture the photo from the negative and
then down sampling the photo to a width of 1280, the wide of my screen.

Surprisingly there is not detail in the print that I can't see on the
screen, but where the screen photos really shines is the much large
range of light levels in it.

This is what a scan from the print looks like.
http://www.pbase.com/konascott/image/45264691/original
This is a very good scan of the print, the colors are the same between
the two and there is no detail lost from the scan.

This is what the photo looks like from scanning the negative
http://www.pbase.com/konascott/image/45264690/original

It looks a bit sharper but the big win is that it has a much large
range of light levels in it. There seems to be much more depth to it.

A good 8.5 by 11 print will shot a lot more detail then I can see on my
computer screen, but almost all of the prints I made when I was
shooting film were either 3.5 x 5 or 5 x 7.

My point on all of this is to point out that a good photo that is
posted on the web can look better then a print. I still like my large
prints the best, but the images on my screen are in many way more fun
to look at then prints made from the same photos.

[Sharp Shooter]

Hello Scott,

Just a few points on your interesting post:

Even a digital print (no conventional optics used) will lose some of
the dynamic range (shadow and highlight detail) compared to what you
see on your screen in your slide or negative scan. Also, a lot may
depend on the lab that produces your prints. Some prints from good
scans can be unacceptable.

For many dedicated amateurs (most I hope!) the whole purpose of SLR
photography, in particular, is the final print and
scanning/image-editing techniques can expand the tonal range in the
digital image so that the print is a much better reflection what you
actually saw at the time of exposure.

http://www.theimageplane.net/slrs.htm#neg

Soft images straight from the camera are preferable because they can be
subtly sharpened for the print. The more information available in the
original images the better use you can make of the ppi for optimum
resolution in digital prints (http://www.theimageplane.net/interp.htm),
so obviously there's no point in downsizing in this context. Images
made smaller for a web page will benefit from sharpeneing.

:o)

Good luck!