I've just posted a short series of 3 pictures (starting with.
They are scanned from some old 6x6 negatives at the modest resolution of 300 dpi (the scanner can handle 4800 dpi).
They are nothing special from the artistic point of view but they have an astonishing detail and grey scale ( I hope that impression survives PB's compression). despite the files being no larger than about 1.5 Meg. Does anyone have an idea as to what allows these images to retain so much "pleasing" information despite the massive amounts of information in the negatives being compressed to less than what comes out of an old mobilephone?

Lovely contrast, however maybe it's just me, but I don't see that details would be so great on a pixel level. It might be the compression though - could you post the high resolution file somewhere?

I'm going to take a stab at this based on a half-remembered article: the non-linearity of film sensitivity, which some contend explains why film still does a much better job at black and white than digital. As you were using medium- format B&W film that captures light in a far more nuanced way than a digital sensor would, you've got a non-linear exposure and all its attendant pleasures that survived the flatbed scanning process.

@rokas I tried RedBubble but the picture isn't much bigger there and I can't be bothered to find another site and create an account just for this, I'm not really into pixel peeping just trying to say that the combination of the grey scale and the detail is more pleasing to my eye than a purely digital image that should contain 10 times as much information. If you want I can send it to you if you have a large enough mailbox.
@revenant I expect there is some truth there though to be honest I can't get my head around it. I still don't understand why such characteristics can't be or aren't built into the image processor of a DSLR, it doesn't sound very complicated.
If you can get a mobile phone to mimic a polaroid, why not a DSLR that can mimic a Hasselblad?