I found this picture in the loft today and the story behind it follows.
For Christmas 2002 I bought my wife Stevie a Nikon 5700 4.9mp camera. At the time we were both using film but she had a fancy.
Christmas for me was spent trying to understand Paint Shop Pro 6, in between going out with Stevie to take pictures. As I had an active darkroom then, it was fairly natural to see how far you could enlarge the digital image before jaggies or other defects started to show. This print was made over that Christmas period on an Hp950 printer.
2 pics are attached taken of this print. The first is a picture of the print, jaggies are now visible in the edges of the diamond pattern. The second is a 100% crop of it. On screen the bulb logo is x2 magnification compared to the print in my hand.
So what does all this say.
The picture was taken using JPEG Fine on a 4.9mp camera. In camera processing by 2002 technology.
Camera was in program mode with default settings for all menu options.
PC processing was minimal due to lack of knowledge but probably included sharpening.
So without screwing things up in post processing, should this qualify as a worst case scenario print of a JPEG Fine image. I think it must come pretty close. Done today I would bin it, as even with my limited knowledge I could do a lot better now.
In real life, this print was the
kiss of death for my Bronica medium format outfit, and within 2 months I had traded it for my D100, 2 lenses and flash. I stopped using film soon after that as the D100 images were far superior to those from the 5700 and easier to process than 35mm. Cannot get more real world than that !!
Link to DPR review of the camera
http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/nikoncp5700/
Don