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Resolution between digital and analog photographic Pictures

H

Hdalal

New member
What number of pixels (in digital photography) is equivalent to pictures taken on Kodachrome II film with Hasselblad 500 C/M with 80mm lens?
 
A

Alkibiades

Well-known member
there are no real exact comparison, digital and analoge (scanned) film are so different. Just to measure the resolution power is meaningless.
Analoge film will always struggle with their essential part, their substantial nature: the grain.
When you digitalize film you will always see this nature on computer monitor. Digital file will always looks cleaner, sharper, simply better in technical sense.
But when you print both files the situation will change: on paper the grainly film structure looks mostly very good and natural, where the digital file can look too clean, too artificially,
like plastic phantastic. It is not always so, it depends on subject...But anyway film will apear on paper much better than on screen.
 
T

Thyl

Member
a couple of years ago I tried a guestimate, and given several assumptions, I ended up with about 16 MP for a fine grain slice film in 35 mm film type. Apparently much more than the estimates given in the DPREVIEW discussion. Black and white film will give a higher resolution, there was even a company that tried to sell a very fine grained b/w film under the name of gigabit film.
 
Godfrey

Godfrey

Well-known member
I think I'll take a snooze. Another film vs digital thread...? really? in 2024? I thought we were done with that in 2005.

Since Kodachrome II is ancient history - discontinued in 1974 - using it as a resolution comparator seems pretty silly. Why not pick some available film that people might actually be using now?

All I can tell you is that the 50 Mpixel digital files produced by my Hasseblad CFVII 50c demonstrate results that make my previous fifty years of shooting 6x6 with Rolleiflex and Hasselblad cameras look somewhat less than spectacular, and the new Hasselblad CFV 100c is considered to be above and beyond that watermark.
 
P

Pieter 12

Well-known member
Godfrey said:
I think I'll take a snooze. Another film vs digital thread...? really? in 2024? I thought we were done with that in 2005.

Since Kodachrome II is ancient history - discontinued in 1974 - using it as a resolution comparator seems pretty silly. Why not pick some available film that people might actually be using now?

All I can tell you is that the 50 Mpixel digital files produced by my Hasseblad CFVII 50c demonstrate results that make my previous fifty years of shooting 6x6 with Rolleiflex and Hasselblad cameras look somewhat less than spectacular, and the new Hasselblad CFV 100c is considered to be above and beyond that watermark.
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Kodachrome is a good choice because it could (practically) only be developed one way. With other films, you introduce more variables which will affect grain (actually, color film has clouds, not grain), perceived sharpness and color.
 
Godfrey

Godfrey

Well-known member
Pieter 12 said:
Kodachrome is a good choice because it could (practically) only be developed one way. With other films, you introduce more variables which will affect grain (actually, color film has clouds, not grain), perceived sharpness and color.
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That's somewhat true (just because the film could only be processed with the standard Kodak processing machinery doesn't mean that every exposure is entirely consistent; Kodak's processing machiney had its own variability as well...), but the film is fifty years out of production, and any transparencies made with it are also ancient. Time degrades all physical media. So unless you are working from a theoretical case of what it once looked like, trying to do a comparison between a Kodachrome II exposure and a properly captured, properly rendered modern digital image is mostly a toss up as to what one is trying to make a decision about.

This whole film vs digital stuff is always a deep deep rathole of ambiguity and emotion.

G
 
P

Pieter 12

Well-known member
Godfrey said:
That's somewhat true (just because the film could only be processed with the standard Kodak processing machinery doesn't mean that every exposure is entirely consistent; Kodak's processing machiney had its own variability as well...), but the film is fifty years out of production, and any transparencies made with it are also ancient. Time degrades all physical media. So unless you are working from a theoretical case of what it once looked like, trying to do a comparison between a Kodachrome II exposure and a properly captured, properly rendered modern digital image is mostly a toss up as to what one is trying to make a decision about.

This whole film vs digital stuff is always a deep deep rathole of ambiguity and emotion.

G
Click to expand...
A Kodachrome slide has a good chance of not degrading much with time, since it can only be viewed on a light table or projected. Unless it has been left out in open light, it will have spent most of its time away from light, heat and moisture.
 
Godfrey

Godfrey

Well-known member
I have tons of Kodachrome slides from as far back as 1968. They've all been stored in archival boxes, not in hot or humid places, etc. Many have shifted color a bit, at least as far as my memory is concerned. They still look good, but they're not the same as I remember them when I first had them processed.

No gelatin-film material is 100% stable. It ages no matter what you do, and the aging process inevitably brings change. I have big reservations about using any of it as a "resolution and color reference" unless it is fresh stock and freshly processed on a clean and well calibrated machine. That hasn't happened for Kodachrome II for at least 45 years.

Back at the dawn of available good quality, consumer accessible digital camera equipment (around the late 1990s when I'd been shooting film for thirty some years), I looked at what I had been working with forever and with the scanning equipment I'd had access to since working on research projects for NASA/JPL and estimated that the closest match to my 35mm Kodachromes I could come up with implied a 35mm full-frame sensor with 12 bits of dynamic range, and approximately 4000x6000 pixel resolution (24 Mpixel). I haven't seen anything that implies this estimate is not still in the right ballpark. So, for a 6x6 match, given a 56x56 mm format sensor, about 83-84 Mpixel resolution with 12 bit dynamic range would likely be a good match to 120 format Kodachrome II out of my Hasselblad. Good luck finding a 56x56 mm sensor.

That said: The CFVII 50c sensor cropped to square format is 33x33 mm and nets about 39 Mpixel output, with 14-15 bits dynamic range rather than just 12 bit, and looks as good as any of my 6x6 film captures ever did. I'm happy with that. I bet the new CFV 100c sensor is a tad better, with another bit of dynamic range and roughly double the pixels at the same unit area. ;)

I think I'll get back to work on my photography and not worry about this digital vs film stuff any more (again).

G
 
tenmangu81

tenmangu81

Well-known member
This is an other story, but only a 12 bits DR for films ? I always thought it was more, but never tried to measure it !
 
cunim

cunim

Well-known member
I don't think bits of DR is the best comparative parameter for film. Maybe "stops" is better? How many stops can the film handle in a single exposure, including both the linear and nonlinear portions of the response function - that would seem to be more what we use when we compare film to digital.
 
I

itsdoable

Member
tenmangu81 said:
This is an other story, but only a 12 bits DR for films ? I always thought it was more, but never tried to measure it !
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12 bits is for Chrome films (although 12 bits is a little generous in my poor memory) which are by design very contrasty as they are optimized for projection. Negative films had more DR (or stops).
 
P

Pieter 12

Well-known member
Godfrey said:
I have tons of Kodachrome slides from as far back as 1968. They've all been stored in archival boxes, not in hot or humid places, etc. Many have shifted color a bit, at least as far as my memory is concerned. They still look good, but they're not the same as I remember them when I first had them processed.

No gelatin-film material is 100% stable. It ages no matter what you do, and the aging process inevitably brings change. I have big reservations about using any of it as a "resolution and color reference" unless it is fresh stock and freshly processed on a clean and well calibrated machine. That hasn't happened for Kodachrome II for at least 45 years.
Click to expand...
How would that aging affect resolution? Do the dye clouds expand or contract?
 
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