I worked in a film lab in college, around 2002. We had one of the first machines capable of printing digital images to photographic paper in the state, because

I worked in a film lab in college, around 2002. We had one of the first machines capable of printing digital images to photographic paper in the state, because the lab owner had a hankering for tech. The first week the machine fired up, we compared a digital file brought in from a pro studio and printed at a larger portrait size, 16x20 I think, with the same image taken with a medium format camera. We all agreed the digital image was at least on par, if not better than, the medium format print. The digital image was sharper and every bit as colorful as the film, but the film image grain was clearly visible. I don't know what camera was used to take it, certainly not a D1H, but I do know it was of the studio, tethered-to-a-computer type, so I want to say we were looking at about a 10 megapixel image.