Artobest, nice website. Some really interesting stuff there. Yeah, maybe I was a bit too enthusiastic with my post, and I would like to add that I am also a newbie to this, so as with any other piece of information from the web, the value of someone random's personal opinion is limited.
I did not know that about modern prints and longevity. I really thought my variable contrast MG IV would last longer. I have tried printing out B&W prints on my Canon MP540, and they look very flat and lifeless. Its my guess you are talking about a whole different ball game, with professional quality scanning and printing.
It also sounds like you might be talking about colour prints, which I know absolutely nothing about. In fact, I went through the whole bit of shooting a proper grey card and then trying to print colour out, and in the end I came to the realisation that a photograph is just a representation of what we see...balancing colour is tricky thanks to the fact its going to end up on a different material reflecting light back at us. The change in texture has an impact on this process. I just came to the conclusion that B&W was more pure for me. I shoot gaudy colour stuff for the folks who look at them through randomly colour balanced screens, but personally prefer the abstraction of B&W. Bright colours are nice, but become a distraction if they are not spot on for me.
Re my slating of scanners: My old V300 could not resolve anything beyond 30lp/mm. My Nikkor enlarger lens lays out much finer detail. Another thing, the V300 scanner emphasises "grain" more, and I believe its something to do with the "callier effect" around the grain which makes it looker larger than it is from a diffuser enlarger. I guess there is scanning and there is scanning. Looking at reviews of Imacons, it seems that they are likely to produce far better prints than a lowly V300.
Last edited by whojammyflip; 10-01-2010 at 05:48 PM.