Dick wrote:

In the early days of digital photography, it was said that something
equivalent to 35mm file was some time out in the future. Are we there
yet? What digital resolution would be equivalent to 35mm film?

There is no one-to-one way to compare. Digital has the unique advantage of
noise only affecting the dynamic, but not the x,y dimension of the image. On
film, noise appears in dynamic as well as x,y. Further, the digital imaging
device is almost perfectly flat. Film rarely is, so the image formed at the
digital imaging plane is free of this minor error as well.

Were a 1:1 comparison made and depending on how you computed it, the equivalence
would occur up in the 15 Mpix / full frame range. However, for most printed
images up to 8x12, 6 Mpix cameras do a marvelous job. Even at twice that size,
if carefully printed, and seen at the appropriate viewing distants, the results
are very acceptable ... and at that point, you're reaching the limits of
acceptable prints from very good 35mm film shots.

As gets pointed out from time to time, looking at digital images (whether from a
DSLR or a scanned neg/pos) leads one to think that the image is not all that
great. Printing a good quality image on even a basic inkjet printer of recent
vintage makes these images shine.

But! You can't project any digital image with the fine detail and impact of a
well done Velvia.

Cheers,
Alan

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