Lawrence Ripsher

As I’ve started to shoot more and more film recently, a question I often get asked is what the resolution of 35mm film is like and how it stacks up against the latest DSLR technology.

Here’s a quick answer – very well.

This isn’t an in depth comparison – as I don’t have a side by side right now to show, but here’s a recent scan of a 35mm negative. Quick specs of the gear used to produce this shot are:

Camera: Olympus OM-4
Lens: Olympus OM Zuiko 55mm f/1.2 shot at approx f/5.6
Film: Kodak T-max 100 (known for sharpness, but not the sharpest film available in my opinion)
Scanner: Nikon Coolscan 5000 (with max 4000 dpi resolution)

The shot is of Seattle’s Space Needle. Here’s the shot:

The image itself at full resolution is 5959 x 3946 pixels. That’s a 23MP image. Not bad for a 20 year old camera (which I paid $220 for on ebay) and even older lens ($400 on ebay). To put it in perspective to today’s equipment – this gives me an image of a similar resolution to the output of my Canon 5D Mark II (retail $2.6k on Amazon) at a fraction of the price.

OK so pixels are one thing, but it’s useless if the the actual resolving isn’t up to scratch. Again, not comparing side by side, but here’s a 100% crop of the left hand side of the image (no post processing – just directly off the scan):

Now, given this is film, a medium for actual artistic expression and it’s an actual / real photograph (not some manufactured scene to satisfy the obsessed), we shouldn’t spend too long looking at the the 100% crop. Still – I don’t admitting I stared at this for at least a short while – it’s hard not to be impressed. And yes before you mention it, at ISO 100 you can see some noise. But remember it’s film, and it’s called grain, and it’s supposed to be there :)

So given that the actual output is good, it’s worth discussing what this size image actually represents in real terms – or to put it another way, how large could you print it. Well at 23MP, it’s possible to have an acceptably sharp print of 30″ x 20″ at 200dpi. This means that at a normal viewing distance the image will look great at a size larger than 99% of people would ever need. Drop the DPI a little (e.g. to an acceptable 120 dpi) and you start to get up to several feet on either dimension. Again, very impressive.

So there you have it… A toe-in-the-water-like response to the question of how film does in resolution terms.

I’ll be revising this topic in much greater depth (film vs digital, more on the Olympus OM series, scanning output and settings, etc) in the coming weeks.

BTW with the Thanksgiving holiday coming up this week in the US, I’ll be posting only sporadically over the next few days (and instead taking lots of pictures). I’ll have lots of content & images to post when I resume.