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What resolution was Film?
- Thread starter zenpmd
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MediaArchivist
Veteran Member
ISO 100 film in the 135 format (ie "full frame") is roughly 20Mp.
Tim Tucker
Senior Member
There is no real direct comparison but modern digital sensors have surpassed 135 film.
At a guess:
The maximum performance I got from 135 FP4 B&W (exposed at 80ASA and developed in HC110) would be equivalent to about 12Mp - 16Mp max, and that's quite impressive.
At a guess:
The maximum performance I got from 135 FP4 B&W (exposed at 80ASA and developed in HC110) would be equivalent to about 12Mp - 16Mp max, and that's quite impressive.
Or a bit less.
The main thing that limits the resolution of film is the sideways spread of light. This can be reduced in various ways, such as incorporating an anti-halation dye in the emulsion.
Pantyhose Bandit
Senior Member
Pan F at 25 asa... Probably 80 megapixels.
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pgb
Senior Member
Around 5K horz pixels or 20 mpx. It decreases with higher ISO as the grain size increases.
It's taken a long while for video or digital to catch up.
When movies were shot on 35mm they were scanned at 2K, similar to HD but the frames are smaller than 24x36mm FF used in photography.
It's taken a long while for video or digital to catch up.
When movies were shot on 35mm they were scanned at 2K, similar to HD but the frames are smaller than 24x36mm FF used in photography.
Tim Tucker
Senior Member
Not the best photo but probably represents the best performance I got from FP4.
Shot at 80ASA and developed in HC110 - NORMAL Development as per Ansel Adams data freely and generously published in the back of his book "The Negative".
Shot with my Nikon F2 with the 50mm f1.4 lens (the model with the shimmering red front element just before they tweaked the design that was the 1.4D).
Coopers and Lybrand Building, Charring Cross, London
Below is a section scanned from the print as I cannot lift the detail from the negative. The depth at which the print holds the vertical element of mesh fence will give you an idea of the resolution of film. This represents the best performance I got, and I recon a 16Mp FF camera will produce a print that will be the equal of this.
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http://timtuckerphoto.smugmug.com/
Shot at 80ASA and developed in HC110 - NORMAL Development as per Ansel Adams data freely and generously published in the back of his book "The Negative".
Shot with my Nikon F2 with the 50mm f1.4 lens (the model with the shimmering red front element just before they tweaked the design that was the 1.4D).
Coopers and Lybrand Building, Charring Cross, London
Below is a section scanned from the print as I cannot lift the detail from the negative. The depth at which the print holds the vertical element of mesh fence will give you an idea of the resolution of film. This represents the best performance I got, and I recon a 16Mp FF camera will produce a print that will be the equal of this.
--
http://timtuckerphoto.smugmug.com/
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Mark Smith145430
Veteran Member
Depends, there is no answer exactly because of the way film is structured, there were many formats from 110 all the way to large format-so what film?
That said, if we tie it down to 35mm only (the most popular) then some of the document films like Agfa Copex (12-32ISO) were very sharp. Kodak could put the whole of the encyclopaedia Brittanica on one 4" (inch) square.
With long tonal scale films ultimate resolution tops out at around 400 line pairs but good luck to achieving that outside of a lab.
This film is one to try for 2metre wide prints...
So in reality, 'film' is a little more variable and specifics are needed to answer your question without making assumptions.
mostlyboringphotog
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I've been wondering from the print ppi perspective.
For a 300 dpi print (gold standard), on per pixel bases, 24M FF sensor would have enough dpi to not require enlargement for 8x10. I realize 24M FF sensor is smaller than 8x10 size, however. Let's say 8x10 film has 600 dpi resolution, x2 of print and account for Bayer loss. That is 4800 x 6000. That's still about 29MP. And D810 hails at 36MP.
Would the D810 print look as good as 8x10 contact print? My guess is it would not but the contact print would not have much more than 300 dpi still, no? I do realize photo image quality is more than dpi only.
Mark Smith145430
Veteran Member
Why would you want to say that? Or conflate ppi with dpi when referring to film.
You're confusing two different issues here.
What you say makes no sense. if a film can record 400 line pair per mm (slow B&W) or 100 for transparencies what amount of line pairs in an 8" high sensor?
mostlyboringphotog
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My question is, I guess, what is the line pair of a photographic paper? Not easy to find from googling...
Mark Smith145430
Veteran Member
Depends on the surface but I'll guess that it's far higher than the naked human eye can resolve, take a traditional photo print made from a 8x10 contact and a D800 printed on your 'gold standard' 300dpi inkjet-take a look at both though an 8x lupe.
only then will you see how flawed it is to use 300dpi as a 'gold standard' and work back to guess how much detail a sheet of 8x10 can resolve.
5
57even
Guest
Measured or visual? At what contrast level?
Here is a good comparison for practical purposes - you make up your own mind.
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/reviews/shootout.shtml
Please note this is an 11 megapixel old generation APSH digital camera vs a 6X7 medium format film.
A drum scan comparison is given at the bottom.
Mark Smith145430
Veteran Member
It was a poor comparison, have a look at a shot from the 'comparison'
Look for the missing window frames on the RHS
So digital is smoother with less noise but certainly doesn't have a higher resolution and when photographing subjects with non linear (don't fit into grids) info like trees you'll really see a difference.
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"a digicam would have to record 140,000 megapixels per shot to match that"
Back over 150 years ago, some cameras "in skilled hands display mind-blowing resolution".
Back over 150 years ago, some cameras "in skilled hands display mind-blowing resolution".
E
Erik Magnuson
Guest
Exactly. Don't forget: Color or b&w? Negative or reversal? What ISO? With best lenses on perfectly flat film planes or typical with common bodies? Do you include print or projection or scanning losses?
To give even a rough answer requires the reason you are asking. Most consumers got better 4x6 and even 8x10 prints with 3mp cameras vs typical cameras and cheap processing. Some photographers still cannot match their film work easily.
Dr JLW
Senior Member
The resolution of film cameras is different from digital camera in several respects.
1) Film had an resolution described conveniently in resolvable lines per mm at different amounts of contrast called modulation transfer function or MTF. This could be adjusted by exposure and development but as a rule of thumb for very good high resolution color transparency film was usually about 70 per mm. Black and white was as high as 150 lime per mm or so. I sometimes got black and white higher by developing to a very high contrast losing gray but getting a more detail.
2) The second aspect of assigning a digital resolution to film is how it is sampled which is why scanner resolution is an issue. The resulting file resolution is a mix of sampling resolution and film resolution. For example if you had a film with 70 per mm and scanned at 70/mm the resolution of the file with be 35/mm.
The resolution of a digital focal plane is one half of its pixel pitch less some effects for cross talk (signal on pixel leaking to its neighbor) . This can be inherent its operation, lens effects, and high pass filtering called anti aliasing.
For typical color film with 70 line pair per mm and a very good lens with 150 lines per mm resolution the resulting film would have a resolution under normal tonal development of a bit less than 50 line pair per mm. I get a resolution of a full frame to be about 2.2 megapixels.
This assumes it is scanned a very high resolution. If scanned at 2500 dpi or about 100 lines/mm the resulting image file is 32lines per mm or bit under 1 megabyte.
Bear in mind that the resolution of a digital sensor is 1/4 of its pixel count at its limit, so the film file is equivalent to an 8.8megapixel sensor.
If we were using high resolution monochromatic film with 120 line pair resolution we get 67 lines pairs with our excellent 150 line lens and this becomes a 3.8 Megasample file. Despite being monochromatic the digital sensor resolution is still twice its senor spacing (Whitaker Shannon sampling theory for the technically interested), so it would take a 15 megapixel array to match it assuming a very high resolution scan.
These numbers are based on rules of thumb but in my experience they work well.
If we compare to larger format the film resolution stays the same in lines per mm so the file size in samples goes as the area of the film hence medium and large format film photography.
1) Film had an resolution described conveniently in resolvable lines per mm at different amounts of contrast called modulation transfer function or MTF. This could be adjusted by exposure and development but as a rule of thumb for very good high resolution color transparency film was usually about 70 per mm. Black and white was as high as 150 lime per mm or so. I sometimes got black and white higher by developing to a very high contrast losing gray but getting a more detail.
2) The second aspect of assigning a digital resolution to film is how it is sampled which is why scanner resolution is an issue. The resulting file resolution is a mix of sampling resolution and film resolution. For example if you had a film with 70 per mm and scanned at 70/mm the resolution of the file with be 35/mm.
The resolution of a digital focal plane is one half of its pixel pitch less some effects for cross talk (signal on pixel leaking to its neighbor) . This can be inherent its operation, lens effects, and high pass filtering called anti aliasing.
For typical color film with 70 line pair per mm and a very good lens with 150 lines per mm resolution the resulting film would have a resolution under normal tonal development of a bit less than 50 line pair per mm. I get a resolution of a full frame to be about 2.2 megapixels.
This assumes it is scanned a very high resolution. If scanned at 2500 dpi or about 100 lines/mm the resulting image file is 32lines per mm or bit under 1 megabyte.
Bear in mind that the resolution of a digital sensor is 1/4 of its pixel count at its limit, so the film file is equivalent to an 8.8megapixel sensor.
If we were using high resolution monochromatic film with 120 line pair resolution we get 67 lines pairs with our excellent 150 line lens and this becomes a 3.8 Megasample file. Despite being monochromatic the digital sensor resolution is still twice its senor spacing (Whitaker Shannon sampling theory for the technically interested), so it would take a 15 megapixel array to match it assuming a very high resolution scan.
These numbers are based on rules of thumb but in my experience they work well.
If we compare to larger format the film resolution stays the same in lines per mm so the file size in samples goes as the area of the film hence medium and large format film photography.
Chris R-UK
Forum Pro
In my camera club prints from DSLRs started to win club print competitions when resolutions reached 6-8MP in 2003-2004.
PK24X36NOW
Senior Member
What film?! What format? Different films (and different formats) had different resolution, you can't generalize.
35mm color slide films of reasonable speed (ISO 200+) were outdone resolution-wise a long time ago by DSLRs, even with smaller than 35mm sensors like APS-C, simply because film grain would overwhelm fine detail on such films.
Most arguments touting the resolution of film over digital imaging are based on specialty films (i.e., often black & white, and/or very low ISO) that weren't suitable for general photography the way digital imaging is.
This link has a pretty realistic assessment:
jkoch2
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Even if 35mm 100 ISO film was, in principle, close to 20 mp resolution, that does not mean your old negatives or prints are very detailed, sharp, or clear.
The quality of lens, illumination, and focus were always hurdles.
When I try to scan negatives shot with a Canon T50 and an f/1.8 50mm lens, the only part that comes out well resolved is the dust. This gets worse as one crops or raises the dpi of the scan.
Flash shots, unless professional studio portraits, might as well have been shot with a disposable camera.
So far as old prints go, many have either faded, or else memory embellishes how they once looked. Budget processing geared to snap shots was not always very good.
Are the sciences of the dark room now vanishing to the shadow realm of dark science?
The quality of lens, illumination, and focus were always hurdles.
When I try to scan negatives shot with a Canon T50 and an f/1.8 50mm lens, the only part that comes out well resolved is the dust. This gets worse as one crops or raises the dpi of the scan.
Flash shots, unless professional studio portraits, might as well have been shot with a disposable camera.
So far as old prints go, many have either faded, or else memory embellishes how they once looked. Budget processing geared to snap shots was not always very good.
Are the sciences of the dark room now vanishing to the shadow realm of dark science?
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