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Thom Hogan’s Complete Guide to the Nikon D300
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detail. Film, being purely analog in nature, has no such
problems. At some point grain effects become visible and
compete with detail, but essentially film doesn’t have the
same kind of “break point” as does digital. Of course, if you
scan the film digitally, all bets are off!
At the other end, we have print technology to with which to
contend. Most digital color print technologies max out at
slightly more than 300 dpi (dots per inch). Inkjet printers often
only need about 240 dpi; even the top print technologies
generally don’t go beyond 360 dpi). At 300 dpi, a D300 file
generates a print size approximately 9.5 x 14” (>ISO A4). The
re-sampling techniques used in Photoshop (or used with a
program such as Genuine Fractals) can easily generate images
twice the original dimensions with invisible artifacts
(essentially unnoticeable at viewing distances), so 19 x 28”
prints are easily obtainable using D300. That, by the way, is
larger than the consumer Epson printers (1800, 2200, 2400)
can produce (they max out at 13 x 19”).
Note: Those of you who own an Epson or other inkjet printer
probably read that last paragraph and said, “but wait, my
inkjet says it prints at 1440 (or 2880) dpi.” A close reading
of the Epson literature, however, shows that their printers
don’t necessarily place that many dots every inch, but
instead use a spray adjustment technique to simulate that
resolution (the size of the dot is varied). When moving the
paper the Epson technologies typically max out at
increments of 1/720 of an inch. The practical physical
resolution you need to give the Epson inkjets is about 288
dpi; beyond that and the actual gains are subtle and often
not at all visible. Other maker’s printers are similar. While
it’s a bit out of the scope of this book, there is a reason why
printers use higher dpi settings during printing. Note that
you can present the printer with 288 dpi and still have it
print at 1440 dpi—the printer driver does a very good job of
creating the additional information, and with high quality
papers you can usually see a small difference if you look
closely. We’ll talk more about printing in the last section of
this book.
