RE: "Pepper grain" (was Minolta Multi Pro)

[Roger Smith <rsmith@xxxxxx>]

At 9:23 AM -0800 4/4/02, gary wrote:
>Can the lack of pepper grain artifacts in the prints be a consequence that
>the film is not perfect flat when held in the enlarger. I notice once in a
>while I can get enough curvature in TMY that the grain is poorly focused at
>the edges when scanned, in effect lowering the optical resolution.

	As far as the specks showing up on darkroom printed images, I
>  did re-examine some 11x14 Cibachromes I printed ten years ago. By
>  examining light areas of the prints under a loupe, I could faintly
>  see tiny specks that looked very much like the "pepper grain", but
>  they were completely invisible under normal viewing conditions.

	I suppose this is possible at the edges, but in my case I 
think it was because the "pepper grain" is so small it is below the 
resolution of the paper. In other words, it disappears into the 
normal "background noise" of a sheet of paper, except in very light 
areas.
	I sent Gary a 1200 ppi scan of a tiny portion of an 11x14 
Cibachrome (printed from an Ektachrome 64 slide taken in 1978) that 
does seem to show very similar "peppering" in areas of almost pure 
white. As I said before, I never would have seen it without looking 
very closely, but it may indicate that this "pepper grain" effect is 
really nothing new.

Regards,
Roger Smith
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