This is a great paper. Thanks for sharing the link.
The discussion about MTF curves and how every weakness in the system compounds is very useful. The sensor’s pixel count isn’t the only variable that determines what you’re going to get!
The couple mentions of Abbe condensers was especially interesting to me, since I’ve been poking around in that direction lately. (I just obtained some cool results–including a couple MTF measurements–that I’m hoping to post about in the ReelSlow8 thread in the next day or two.)
But the most apt line I spotted for the purposes of this discussion was in the Fig.24 caption on page 23:
Also note how the […] grain detracts from resolving information in the 100 year old film; the image is much noisier. Some believe that the [image with more grain] looks sharper because the film grain appears sharp, but comparing the images will show more image information in the [image with less grain].
Granted, the comparisons there are on more equal footing (vs. the Kinetta article), having been taken at the same resolution and only varying the method of capture instead. But I’m with cpixip on this one: grain is a spatio-temporal source of noise that corrupts the signal. Certainly you need enough resolution (and corresponding resolving power in the rest of your system!) to collect the signal in the first place, but if there are any adjustments we can make to reduce the magnitude of the grain–holding everything else constant–that’s probably the way to go.