If 35mm film was measured in megapixels how many would it have?

Question

I have heard color print film has a resolution of 15 megapixels.Technical film is greater at 20 megapixels.What is the greatest resolution consumer film and do you think digital will surpass it.

Answer 1

The resolution of film really has to do with the resolving power of the lens you are using, coupled with the ISO and type of film that you are using. Granted you asked a question about print film, but with slide film such as 35mm Fujichrome velvia ISO 50, the megapixel equivalent is somewhere around 10-16 megapixels.
Of course you have to realize that 35mm is not the holy grail of film. There are lots of other sizes that are used by professionals all of which are readily available for purchase at any pro camera shop, such as 8x10 film (thats 8 inches by 10 inches). Using that same film as previously mentioned but in 8x10 format you can achieve a megapixel equivalent of anywhere from 860-900 megapixels. Will digital photography reach a level such as this? Currently the largest digital sensor available on the market is made by Kodak and has a megapixel rating of 39, and is utilized in the new line of Hasselblad camera. 39 megapixels is a quite respectable figure considering that this is medium format territory but the question is will digital cameras be able to reach or surpass 4x5 0r 8x10 film which can range anywhere from 200- 900 megapixels? To begin 99.9% of consumers would have no use for such a camera being that most people print no larger than 5x7. Secondly even if a digital sensor were produced that could exceed 200 megapixels, current CF card technology is not available to make such a camera practical for daily use. You would have to most likely work in a studio and the camera would be teathered to a computer with a sizeable hard drive.
My guess is that we are going to hit a plateau soon, that although the technology may be available to make larger digital sensors, and more robust CF cards, there will just not be the consumer demand for such a product and the only advancements you will see will be with professional cameras, but as we all know, pro cameras are not cheap, and that new 39 megapixel Hasselblad camera is well in excess of $30,000, so lets just imagine there is a 900 megapixel camera, the pricetag on such a camera would be like a downpayment on the space shuttle.
By the way flat statements like film is better or digital is better is both wrong, and both right!
Why? There is no one single correct answer. Thus, depending on what you want to do, one tool may be better than another. For example what if you are doing mural print 10 feet by 15 feet, or 39 megapixel image will break apart, whereas a drum scan of a 8x10 negative will produce a sharp, clear, and tonally perfect image. As for the idea of wasted film, study photography more.
Go to clarkvision.com and you can read more about how film and digital technologies are analyzed and compared.

Answer 2

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Answer 3

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RE:
If 35mm film was measured in megapixels how many would it have?
I have heard color print film has a resolution of 15 megapixels.Technical film is greater at 20 megapixels.What is the greatest resolution consumer film and do you think digital will surpass it.

Answer 4

An "SLR" style digital camera of 6 to 8 megapixels will perform AT LEAST as well as a good 35mm camera.
I have run a pro photo lab for 20 years, and the latest generation of digital sensors, particularly the cmos sensors, are excellent. The digital images also lend themselves to digital enhancement with much less trouble. The biggest gripe with the digital cameras is the brightness range, not the resolution.
For a real shocker see some of the images printed from some of the 12 to 15 megapixel digital cameras.You won't believe how good they can be! They compare very favorably with 4x5 and 8x10 film images and leave 35mm FAR behind.

Answer 5

35mm Film Megapixels

Answer 6

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A megapixel is a million pixels. Each pixel is made up of three primary colored dots itself. And through some computer magic it can see the scene and activate and mix the colors, 7.2 million times to make a picture. It's measured by how many little holes they fill with dots when they biuld the camera's sensor. Professionals use large format film for landscapes. Gregory Crewdson does and makes $60,000 per print. Alec Soth also uses large format. His most famous work was of Niagara Falls. He is also known for a street photography project in Columbia with 35mm film. Annie Leibovitz is known to use Hasselblad medium format film cameras. Sebastiao Salgado also uses Leica. Joel Meyerowitz did the entire 9/11 clean up with large format. Everyone who makes alot of money was doing it way before 1997. Digital only has come close to being capable of fine art in the past 2 years, dare I say. You might make some good money doing staff for a magazine but the tons of money, art guys all use film.

Answer 7

Not considering the lens effect or if the camera in use had the same quality and focal length lens, consider that 35mm is not the only film option but there are also other factors to consider. You'd have to compare butter and margarine... not apples and oranges.

35mm film is just one size film. There are 4"x5" film, 8" x 10" film and even larger which means that during the printing phase, the larger the film, the less enlarging you have to deal with and thusly the image's sharpness is not as compromised by the enlarging (of grains) as you would with the tinier 35mm film. That's why many preferred the 2 1/4" format of medium cameras when film was in popular use a few years ago.

If I take a 35mm film and I enlarged it to say 8" x 10", I'd have to magnify the tiny film image many more times than I would for a film that starts out larger, like the 2 1/4" format or 4" x 5" or 8" x 10" format.

But, aside from the actual film size, there's the issue of film speed. Common film speeds include ISO 25, 50, 64, 100, 160, 200, 400, 800, 1600, and 3200 but consumer print films are usually in the ISO 64, 100, 200, 400, and 800. The faster the film (or the more light sensitive it is) the less you should enlarge because the grains are larger and more spaced out on the film's gel; this means that if you use ISO 64 (which requires more light) and compare it with ISO 800 (which requires less light than ISO 64), you should be able to see more grain on the image taken with ISO 800 if you were to make a poster than if you compared it with the same image taken with ISO 64.

So, if I were using 2 1/4" film with an ISO of 64, and you compared that processed and enlarged image with any digital camera image on the market, I tend to believe that the film image will contain more minute detail when enlarged to poster size. But, there's something we're leaving out: the viewing distance of the poster... are we going to stand 12 inches away or 5 feet away or farther away, in which case, the minute details will be lost to the viewer. So, what's the real need for such immense detail in an image that is not going to be viewed up close, or for that matter, why should I use ISO 64 which requires far more light than ISO 400, if I am only going to enlarge to 8" x 10" (where ISO 400 yields perfectly detailed images)???

A digital camera in and of itself has many conveniences over the film medium, and for everyday photo-taking, why would I really need a super-duper-mega pixel camera that will cost you an arm, leg and a kidney or some other vital organ if you're only going to view the images on a monitor (what you see is only as good as your monitor and how well you've set the monitor's colors) or send the images via Internet or if you're using a conventional printer with photographic paper and ink and the printer can only yield a maximum size of 8" x 10" (or 8 1/2" x 11")?

For everyday photo taking, most digital cameras have an edge in that you can shoot one image at ISO 1600 in low light situation and the very next at ISO 100 for a portrait to be enlarged commercially without opening the camera back and exchanging the film or without using another camera loaded with the other film.

Wackywallwalker, very good points!

I still use and prefer film cameras and love every minute of it. Contrary to popular belief, there's still a use for film and there are still many film users around. There are also many, many Black & White film users still developing and printing their own films and images all over the world.

There's a place and use for film technology AND for digital technology. I'm still using my film cameras but am considering getting a digital to send images to friends and relatives over the internet (film can also be scanned with great results, depending on the scanner and the cost thereof).

Answer 8

I don't know how many megapixels you would need to match that of 35mm, but film sure looks better than digital for 11 by 14" prints or larger. It is only a matter of time before digital prints will look as good as silver based (silver-dye for color,) to a purist like me.
Negatives scanned into the computer can already look pretty good, though.

Answer 9

You will not be able to get a 35mm camera with the mp to equal 35mm film for 15--20 years. Then you will not be able to afford it.

Mamiya is coming out with a 20 mp 6x6CM (2 1/4 x 2 1/4 inches) but it will not be cheap. It will not equal film.

Answer 10

Today, nearly 10 years after this post, most images are only ever viewed digitally e.g. social media, or website. Cameras(entry-level and enthusiast) are around the 12-20(ish)MP range, too...including cell phones. That goes to show you that after this question was posted, we had only advanced from around 6-10MP cameras, to 12-20MP in ten years. LoL That s because the practicality to furthering resolution diminishes. For where we are in optics, practicality/ use, and ISO performance 15MP seems to be the sweet spot. About the only use of going beyond that would be for viewability on higher resolution monitors, which even a 4K monitor(4096x2160) is more than at home with a 15-16MP file of 4752 x 3168, so long as the details are clean at that resolution, which, today a 16MP file blown completely up will likely look a little dirty on account of where we are at on a sensor and optical quality level on most consumer entry level cameras and phones. So, I reckon by time 8K monitors are the thing, we ll probably see a two-fold increase in sensor resolution, even though it s not necessarily needed for printing purposes on the more common level. Unfortunately, the reason digital display will dictate this is because photos, these days, never really leave the digital format. They are post-processed/ processed digitally and typically either uploaded or stored on digital media.