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A modern full-frame DSLR sensor has greater resolving power than normal medium-format film. You need a really, really good lens to get the full performance out

A modern full-frame DSLR sensor has greater resolving power than normal medium-format film. You need a really, really good lens to get the full performance out of a >40MPix sensor. You still want to shoot handheld, so you want a really fast lens to minimise the impact of camera shake. Sharp/fast/light - pick any two. Zeiss, Sigma and Sony have broken the old Canon/Nikon duopoly with a range of phenomenally good but relatively heavy lenses that can exploit the full capabilities of modern sensors. Casual customers who need a "good enough" camera are perfectly satisfied with their smartphone or a cheap kit lens. Aftermarket lenses are inevitably going to target the pixel-peeping crowd who care about every lp/mm, because they spend the big bucks on lenses. There's still a market for lightweight aftermarket lenses, but it's nowhere near as big or profitable as the market for monster glass.

snowwrestler 8y ago
> A modern full-frame DSLR sensor has greater resolving power than normal medium-format film. This really depends on the film and MF lens. I've shot 6x6 Provia on a Mamiya 6 and had it scanned at 40MP and 80MP final output sizes; the latter was clearly better. Resolution can be even higher with modern fine-grained black and white film. > You still want to shoot handheld, so you want a really fast lens to minimise the impact of camera shake. Or image stabilization, which also adds weight and size.
- jdietrich 8y ago
  >This really depends on the film and MF lens. I've shot 6x6 Provia on a Mamiya 6 and had it scanned at 40MP and 80MP final output sizes; the latter was clearly better. Resolution can be even higher with modern fine-grained black and white film. Film scanning is a bit deceptive, because film doesn't have pixels. You'll get more resolution from an 80MPix film scan, but that doesn't mean that the film actually has 80Mpix of useful resolution. A lot of information is lost in the conversion between silver particles and a scanner sensor, so you really need to substantially oversample. In the ideal case for color MF film (a ~200MPix drum scan of 6x7 Velvia 50) you might just about match the resolving power of a A7R III, at the cost of a substantial amount of dynamic range - film has a lot of exposure latitude, but it has substantial innate dynamic range compression. Technical monochrome films can significantly exceed the resolving power of modern 35mm sensors, but at the cost of ~6 stops of sensitivity. Unless you're shooting landscapes or test charts from a very substantial tripod, you won't benefit from the extra spatial resolution. There's still a place for medium- and large-format film, but the inconvenience outweighs the benefits in the overwhelming majority of cases.
  - snowwrestler 8y ago
    Here's a great article that goes in-depth on comparing the resolution and image quality of MF and LF film vs. images from a D800e. A D850 or A7R III has about 10% more linear resolution than a D800e. https://www.onlandscape.co.uk/2014/12/36-megapixels-vs-6x7-velvia/ https://www.onlandscape.co.uk/2014/12/36-megapixels-vs-6x7-v... I love this article because it not only looks at lines per mm, it considers other image quality factors like local contrast and color resolution.
    - foldr 8y ago
      The article shows that the Velvia 50 isn't resolving significantly more detail than the D800e's sensor. It's not surprising that the CMS 20 shows more detail. CMS 20 is a technical film that's not usually practical for normal photography.
      - snowwrestler 8y ago
        I'd suggest taking a closer look at the first set of test chart comparison shots. The D800e is not resolving any lines on the chart at all--the "lines" you see in the D800e shot are moire. You can see the same thing in the comparison shots of the camera. In the D800e shot, the Nikon logo and fine print on the lens are smeared, with yellow and blue artifacts. In the Mamiya Velvia shot, the Nikon logo is sharply defined, with no color artifacts. However, there is grain in Velvia shot. This is a good example of how there is more to resolution and image quality than just counting megapixels. If you hate grain, the D800e shot is better, despite the moire. If you'll tolerate grain for more resolution, the Mamiya Velvia shot is better.
        foldr 8y ago
        I've seen the comparison shots - that's what I'm basing my comment on. The medium format film shots don't resolve the lines either - except the CMS 20, which is not a practical film for normal photography. These black and white line pair charts make film look more impressive than it really is, since film has a long "very fine detail at very low contrast" tail. A more instructive comparison would be medium contrast line pairs. As I said in my other comment, the easy way to prove that a medium format negative can resolve 80MP worth of detail is to provide an 80MP scan which loses detail when downsampled to, say, 40MP. I've asked a bunch of people for examples of such a scan over the years and never received one. For some reason, the comparison site you link to doesn't provide any of the original files, so it's difficult to draw any conclusions.
- pedrocr 8y ago
  >Or image stabilization, which also adds weight and size. In-body stabilization is a great solution for this. f/1.4 primes and in-body stabilization are a great combination for available light photography.
- foldr 8y ago
  >I've shot 6x6 Provia on a Mamiya 6 and had it scanned at 40MP and 80MP final output sizes; the latter was clearly better. The real test is whether you can find any details visible in the 80MP scan that are lost if it's downsampled to 40MP.
  - snowwrestler 8y ago
    The 80MP scan passed that test for me.
    - hexane360 8y ago
      I don't think you understand. The wrong comparison is between the 40MP scan and the 80MP scan. The right comparison is between the 80MP scan and the 80MP scan downsampled to 40MP.
      - snowwrestler 8y ago
        I do understand.
        foldr 8y ago
        Can you give an example of an 80MP scan that loses detail when downsampled to 40MP?
BuildTheRobots 8y ago
> A modern full-frame DSLR sensor has greater resolving power than normal medium-format film. Scanned at 5,300dpi (which seems to be the higher end offered by negative scanning services), my medium format 6cm square negative yields a 156 megapixel image. [1] I'm not aware of any crop sensors offering comparable resolution, in fact this round-up of current cameras seems to suggest <50mpx is more likely and I'm sure some of those are "full frame". [1] https://www.pixelcalculator.com/?round=&FORM=1&DP=1&FA=&lang=en&mm1=60&mm2=60&dpi1=5300&sub1=+calculate+#a1 https://www.pixelcalculator.com/?round=&FORM=1&DP=1&FA=&lang... [2] https://www.practicalphotography.com/group-tests-articles/2016/8/24/6-best-dslr-and-csc-cameras-with-super-high-resolutions https://www.practicalphotography.com/group-tests-articles/20...
- jdietrich 8y ago
  I could scan a blank piece of card at 156 megapixels, but that card wouldn't contain 156 megapixels worth of information. You're scanning discrete particles of silver metal, which are effectively opaque and have a finite size. Shoot a test chart and you'll see what film is actually capable of resolving.
  - bluedino 8y ago
    Is there a 'Nyquist theorem' that applies to photography?
    - e12e 8y ago
      Yes, the Nyquist theorem? https://photo.stackexchange.com/questions/10755/what-is-the-nyquist-limit-and-what-is-its-significance-to-photographers https://photo.stackexchange.com/questions/10755/what-is-the-...
    - phicoh 8y ago
      Basically, to make a film 'faster' you capture phonons from a larger area. Or the other way around, film that can resolve very fine details needs a lot of light. Film has a built-in low pass filter. Typically 'sampling' in film is random enough that you can capture very fine detail if the contrast is high enough. It behaves quite differently from digital sampling techiques. For this reason, you want to scan film at a very high resolution. But that doesn't mean that the image actually contains a huge of informaion.

snowwrestler 8y ago

> A modern full-frame DSLR sensor has greater resolving power than normal medium-format film. This really depends on the film and MF lens. I've shot 6x6 Provia on a Mamiya 6 and had it scanned at 40MP and 80MP final output sizes; the latter was clearly better. Resolution can be even higher with modern fine-grained black and white film. > You still want to shoot handheld, so you want a really fast lens to minimise the impact of camera shake. Or image stabilization, which also adds weight and size.

jdietrich 8y ago
>This really depends on the film and MF lens. I've shot 6x6 Provia on a Mamiya 6 and had it scanned at 40MP and 80MP final output sizes; the latter was clearly better. Resolution can be even higher with modern fine-grained black and white film. Film scanning is a bit deceptive, because film doesn't have pixels. You'll get more resolution from an 80MPix film scan, but that doesn't mean that the film actually has 80Mpix of useful resolution. A lot of information is lost in the conversion between silver particles and a scanner sensor, so you really need to substantially oversample. In the ideal case for color MF film (a ~200MPix drum scan of 6x7 Velvia 50) you might just about match the resolving power of a A7R III, at the cost of a substantial amount of dynamic range - film has a lot of exposure latitude, but it has substantial innate dynamic range compression. Technical monochrome films can significantly exceed the resolving power of modern 35mm sensors, but at the cost of ~6 stops of sensitivity. Unless you're shooting landscapes or test charts from a very substantial tripod, you won't benefit from the extra spatial resolution. There's still a place for medium- and large-format film, but the inconvenience outweighs the benefits in the overwhelming majority of cases.
- snowwrestler 8y ago
  Here's a great article that goes in-depth on comparing the resolution and image quality of MF and LF film vs. images from a D800e. A D850 or A7R III has about 10% more linear resolution than a D800e. https://www.onlandscape.co.uk/2014/12/36-megapixels-vs-6x7-velvia/ https://www.onlandscape.co.uk/2014/12/36-megapixels-vs-6x7-v... I love this article because it not only looks at lines per mm, it considers other image quality factors like local contrast and color resolution.
  - foldr 8y ago
    The article shows that the Velvia 50 isn't resolving significantly more detail than the D800e's sensor. It's not surprising that the CMS 20 shows more detail. CMS 20 is a technical film that's not usually practical for normal photography.
    - snowwrestler 8y ago
      I'd suggest taking a closer look at the first set of test chart comparison shots. The D800e is not resolving any lines on the chart at all--the "lines" you see in the D800e shot are moire. You can see the same thing in the comparison shots of the camera. In the D800e shot, the Nikon logo and fine print on the lens are smeared, with yellow and blue artifacts. In the Mamiya Velvia shot, the Nikon logo is sharply defined, with no color artifacts. However, there is grain in Velvia shot. This is a good example of how there is more to resolution and image quality than just counting megapixels. If you hate grain, the D800e shot is better, despite the moire. If you'll tolerate grain for more resolution, the Mamiya Velvia shot is better.
      - foldr 8y ago
        I've seen the comparison shots - that's what I'm basing my comment on. The medium format film shots don't resolve the lines either - except the CMS 20, which is not a practical film for normal photography. These black and white line pair charts make film look more impressive than it really is, since film has a long "very fine detail at very low contrast" tail. A more instructive comparison would be medium contrast line pairs. As I said in my other comment, the easy way to prove that a medium format negative can resolve 80MP worth of detail is to provide an 80MP scan which loses detail when downsampled to, say, 40MP. I've asked a bunch of people for examples of such a scan over the years and never received one. For some reason, the comparison site you link to doesn't provide any of the original files, so it's difficult to draw any conclusions.
pedrocr 8y ago
>Or image stabilization, which also adds weight and size. In-body stabilization is a great solution for this. f/1.4 primes and in-body stabilization are a great combination for available light photography.
foldr 8y ago
>I've shot 6x6 Provia on a Mamiya 6 and had it scanned at 40MP and 80MP final output sizes; the latter was clearly better. The real test is whether you can find any details visible in the 80MP scan that are lost if it's downsampled to 40MP.
- snowwrestler 8y ago
  The 80MP scan passed that test for me.
  - hexane360 8y ago
    I don't think you understand. The wrong comparison is between the 40MP scan and the 80MP scan. The right comparison is between the 80MP scan and the 80MP scan downsampled to 40MP.
    - snowwrestler 8y ago
      I do understand.
      - foldr 8y ago
        Can you give an example of an 80MP scan that loses detail when downsampled to 40MP?

BuildTheRobots 8y ago

> A modern full-frame DSLR sensor has greater resolving power than normal medium-format film. Scanned at 5,300dpi (which seems to be the higher end offered by negative scanning services), my medium format 6cm square negative yields a 156 megapixel image. [1] I'm not aware of any crop sensors offering comparable resolution, in fact this round-up of current cameras seems to suggest <50mpx is more likely and I'm sure some of those are "full frame". [1] https://www.pixelcalculator.com/?round=&FORM=1&DP=1&FA=&lang=en&mm1=60&mm2=60&dpi1=5300&sub1=+calculate+#a1 https://www.pixelcalculator.com/?round=&FORM=1&DP=1&FA=&lang... [2] https://www.practicalphotography.com/group-tests-articles/2016/8/24/6-best-dslr-and-csc-cameras-with-super-high-resolutions https://www.practicalphotography.com/group-tests-articles/20...

jdietrich 8y ago
I could scan a blank piece of card at 156 megapixels, but that card wouldn't contain 156 megapixels worth of information. You're scanning discrete particles of silver metal, which are effectively opaque and have a finite size. Shoot a test chart and you'll see what film is actually capable of resolving.
- bluedino 8y ago
  Is there a 'Nyquist theorem' that applies to photography?
  - e12e 8y ago
    Yes, the Nyquist theorem? https://photo.stackexchange.com/questions/10755/what-is-the-nyquist-limit-and-what-is-its-significance-to-photographers https://photo.stackexchange.com/questions/10755/what-is-the-...
  - phicoh 8y ago
    Basically, to make a film 'faster' you capture phonons from a larger area. Or the other way around, film that can resolve very fine details needs a lot of light. Film has a built-in low pass filter. Typically 'sampling' in film is random enough that you can capture very fine detail if the contrast is high enough. It behaves quite differently from digital sampling techiques. For this reason, you want to scan film at a very high resolution. But that doesn't mean that the image actually contains a huge of informaion.