35mm resolution compared to digital.

[mike_sato]

What is the resolution of 35mm color film expressed in Mega Pixels?

Or put another way, what resolution digital camera is equivalent to

35mm color film?

 

Thanks,

Mike

[edward_yu3]

My apologies in advance, if my comments are side-tracking the topic.

If this is a comparison issue between film and digital, resolution is one aspect to investgate. Yet it is all so easy to see new models coming up with higher resolution. We are likely to be satisfied when 10m pixels becomes common with compact cameras. I read from one source that quoted a scientific magazine of the possiblily of having digitally sensors that are smaller than the grain of a film. Then I saw a response from a technical manager responding that the effective area of such sensors would be only a certain % of the sensor. I did not bother to check any further. Personally, I think I concern more about contrast, shutter delay, depth of field preview and company planned model obsolence.

[catchiest_zero]

I assume that you are referring to the current state of the art digital systems as compared to current state of the art film based systems. The short answer is that the two are comparable at low ISO/ASA speeds, but digital has increasingly apparent advantage with increase in ISO/ASA values. I'm also attaching a reference article for a longer, in-depth discussion.

 

Ref: http://clarkvision.com/imagedetail/film.vs.digital.summary1.html

[kelly_flanigan1]

As my 8th grade teacher said years ago; "the answer lies in the domain of the positive real numbers". One can get a 10 to 1 spread or more with a question like this; maybe 20 to 1. It is like asking how many shoes does a woman need; how many lures does a fisherman need; or comparing how many mouse traps equals one cat.

[clinton_abe]

It used to be said that you would need about 34MP to equal ASA 100 film, but the Canon EOS-1Ds with 16.6MP is as sharp, or sharper.

[mike_sato]

Clinton,

 

Searching the web for a couple of hours, I found 2 posts that say that Kodak stated that 24MP would equal 35mm film. But could not find the actual Kodak web page that says that. But the 24MP is probably a theoretical value so the 16MP you mention being as good or better sounds about right.

 

Thanks,

Mike

[sl attanapola]

More than resolution what about highlight burnouts?

 

You can mess about in photoshop to help alleviate this situation but film is still better in this respect.

 

Fuji are the only camera company at the moment which is trying to tackle this problem at the moment with the S3 Pro digital SLR.

[jbq]

Very hard to compare them - you can't express resolution in terms of a unique absolute number, in order to be precise you need to look at it as a curve. The curves for film have overall a very different shape than the curve for digital - in some areas the curve fo film is higher, in some areas the curve for digital is higher.

 

Also, even if it was possible to directly compare resolution, there are so many other factors to take into account that a single "resolution" comparison would be irrelevant.

[neal_shields]

http://www.fbi.gov/hq/lab/fsc/backissu/april2002/swgitfield1.htm

 

 

http://www.kodak.com/global/en/digital/ccd/publications/whitePapersArticles.jhtml

 

 

http://www.normankoren.com/Tutorials/Scan8000.html

 

http://www.zeiss.de/C12567A8003B58B9/Inhalt-Frame/C848A011BACB8FF0C1256B1A002DBD21

 

What a lot of people miss is that a line pair is a pair. I.E. one black line and one white. That means that it takes at least two rows of pixels to reproduce a line pair, but that would imply perfect registration. In reality it takes at least 3 hense Kodak's .7 multiplyer of the "Niquest frequency".

 

Even drug store film can record 80 to 150 lp/mm depending on contrast. (most of us would find the gray on gray 80 end to boreing to photograph so the reality is probably about 125)

 

So as said above the number is probably between 16 and 25 meg.

[craig_gillette]

You won't get a consistent or undisputable answer. You may have noticed that digital cameras are outselling film in pretty much all categories and film is becoming less and less available, etc. That's anecdotal but serves to point out that there are issues byond mere resolution driving this.

 

Are you prepared to pay a large amount of money to buy the highest resolution digital camera? Are you ready to take the step up from 35mm film to larger formats? Have huge numbers of 6 meg dslrs been sold and did they underperform? What are the practical or useful resolutions of scanners being used to scan 35mm film? Are you interested in driving either to the point that either the pixels or the grain are ugly and it's a choice of how ugly did it get and how esthetic wwas the uglying process/appearance?

 

This is an angels dancing on the head of a pin question if provided without context.

[neal_shields]

"This is angels dancing on the head of a pin"

 

I tend to agree that for 90% of the population this is becoming a moot point.

 

If you buy the best 35mm film, the best camera and prime lens, mount it on the most stable platform you can find, focus with a loop, lock the mirror up and release the shutter with a cable release; and then take it to a drug store, or big chain to have a print made, they will first take your negative and take a low res digital photo of it (not even a scan) and then make you a print at 300 dpi... effectively distroying all your careful work.

[kelly_flanigan1]

Here I have a mess of scanners; flatbed; film; scan back; and engineering 36" bar type. With 35mm; I can use the 4000dpi film scanner; 2720 dpi setting film scanner; the 2400 dpi flatbed; which is like really a say 1200 to 1600 dpi film scanner. In the vast majority of advanced amateur 35mm scan jobs; the flatbed is good enough. Their images scanned with a 2720 dpi film scanner show little if any more detail; due to missfocus; fast film; so so optics.

[neal_shields]

...and not using a tripod or lens hood.

[kelly_flanigan1]

Here we made trial exhibits for both sides of a court case. One shot both side produced were aerial images of intersection; shot from a plane or helicopter. One side had MF 6x6cm negatives; the other a digital shot with a canon dRebel; the cropped "non full frame" type. The Canon shots were way better; sharper; probably more so due to higher shutter speeds. The Hassleblad guy with zeiss 100mm shots were way worse; due to blured too low shutter speeds. A scan with our Epson 2450 at about 1200 dpi was really vast overkill; even a 600 setting would be enough; due to dumb planning; not understanding that high shutter speeds are required for aerials; versus a tripod shots. Here "Mr Zeiss" was so engrossed int eh best f stop for sharpness; that he failed to understand camera motion from a moving plane. The canon shots were with the 99 dollar kit zoom; radically better; due to using high shutter speeds; and stopping the motion enough.

[edward_yu3]

Correct me if I were wrong. The legendary Kodakachrome 25 (slide)was supposed to be the film with the highest resoultion. Sadly it is not commercially avaiable any moore . Resolution of film was determined by lines/mm and slide films has been far superior to negatives. I still think this is true till this day. So, Mike, I suggest that you check up Kodak for techical spec of the still available Kodachrome slide film and be happy to start your comparison. Please tell us the results.

[kelly_flanigan1]

What is the resolution in megapixels of kodachrome-X asa 64 in a Instamatic 104? Here the 28x28mm Kodapak film area is decent; but the lens is the limit; thus the film is not the limit.

[steve_swinehart]

What do you want to do with the image? What type of film are you comparing the digital image with? You're asking a question that is difficult to answer because it is so interactive with film choice, final print size, and print production method.

 

For example, I've been using a 10 mp camera (Leica with DMR back), and have been quite surprised at the quality of the images.

 

Since I don't take photos of line pairs like Neil Shields, I find testing the camera on real world subjects a bit more realistic. The images produced by the camera can be taken up to 18 x 23 (inches), and look every bit as good as 35mm film at that size.

 

In fact, compared with something like K200 or even Provia 400 - they look better. Compared with E100G or Provia 100F, they look at least equal to film, but without grain.

 

I'd say 16mp is easily the equal of 35mm. For most uses 10-12 mp will surpass 400 speed film and be every bit the imaging equal to 100 speed film.

[bjmarkowitz]

Mike, I once read in pop photo magazne that cheap 100 speed negative film is the equivilent of a 27MP digital camera shooting in RAW mode. Howeve, you can shoot 100 speed slide film and get even better results than with negative and the number is probably quite higher.

 

However, as technology gets better, the differences are decreasing. Once, you could not get acceptable pics with a digital above the 400 iso equivilent...now you can. But once ISO 800 speed film was horrible, now you can get great results with ISO 800 neg film.

(With film, you can go to 1600, or with B&W you can get 3200 speed film -- no digital can offer that flexability.)

 

Also, remember, with film you are always shooting in "RAW" mode. With digital, unless you have a large card and your camera writes th info fast, you are usually shooting in JPEG or TIFF mode, i.e., there is some compression and therefore, some degredation of quality. Accordingly, the MP size to approach film quality is going to be something VERY Large, and that 27MP number actually, in my mind, seems small.

[marc_bergman1]

"(With film, you can go to 1600, or with B&W you can get 3200 speed film -- no digital can offer that flexability.)"

 

The quality of this answer is about 2 MP.

 

Digital not only offers this flexability it allows it to be done from one shot to the next.