Megapixels/Film

CMan

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I've heard a lot of talk about how many megapixels you'd need to equal the quality of 35mm film. I've heard everything from 10-50 megapixels; so, do any of you guys know?

I'm just curious; as even though I've sung the praises of digital on here a few times, I've decided to switch back to film, for several reasons, mainly image quality.
 
At one point people were saying 25, some say 6. Short answer, there is no answer. They're not really comparable. "Quality" involves several factors, including the quality of the digital sensor (or the film) and the way in which the image is printed. You probably need to scan film at a fairly high resolution to get detail equivalent to a good 6mp DSLR's images, and scanning may exaggerate the grain of the film. Negative film printed using the traditional silver process is arguably going to produce nicer results than film digitally scanned and then printed. Some people will think that film grain is much more aesthetically agreeable than digital noise; some may disagree. Having said that, most people seem to find clean images from both 35mm film and 6-8mp digital ideal for prints at 7x5 or 8x6, and many are happy with the quality of images from both even at much larger sizes (after all interpolation is possible to varying degrees of success).
 

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