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Comment by bigdubs | Hacker News Reader

The lens quality barrier at 24MP isn't arbitrary; that's basically the equivalent digital resolution you get from 35mm film.

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There are all kinds of films out there, including very very high resolution ones. Gigabitfilm is supposedly 720 lp/mm, which would give you

    36*24*(720*2)^2 = 1.79 gigapixels

(theoretically, of course)

Not true - obviously it slightly depends on the grain of the film but the theoretical resolution of high quality 35mm film is ~87MP

Full frame, obviously.

You'd need to be using Kodak Technical Pan at a rated speed of 12 to 16 (before filter factors, for continuous-tone images with smooth gradients) in order to get there, though. Kodachrome 25 (in the K14 process version) and Ektar 25 weren't terribly far behind, but neither had a great deal of latitude. And you'd also need something a little flatter than the typical film aperture and pressure plate to really use it. More typical 35mm films - those with usable sensitivities for general photography - wouldn't get you anywhere near there.

Sure, there’s tons of variation of course and 87 is the upper limit, but from what I’ve read it’s still the 40-50MP range before you hit the limits of a decent typical 35mm film.

Lens quality does start to become a factor a bit earlier than that too.

A lot of the comparisons I've read (and internally Leica's own tests) say otherwise.

https://petapixel.com/2014/12/18/comparing-image-quality-fil...

I mean... in that very article the 80MP camera looks worse than film (tho more sharpened, go go digital image processing!)

You appear to have provided counter evidence to your own position.

Take a look at the 35mm section, that's explicitly not the conclusion of the article.

"The results are very impressive and from our comparisons we think scanned color slide film has a digital equivalent resolution of between 12MP and 24MP depending on what aspect you look at (12MP for overall sharpness appearance, 14-16MP for luminosity resolution, and 24MP for color resolution). These figures are estimates based on a good Imacon or Drum scan and would be even higher for projected or enlarged images."

So you're basically reading that and going, well I think I'm right anyway.

Much higher brightness range on film too (potentially -- depends on the film of course).

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