Does a 35 mm camera produce better prints than a digital 10 megapixel camera?

Question

Does a 35 mm camera produce better prints than a digital 10 megapixel camera?

Answer 1

First off, yes film is better. Like LEM said,  as long as it is quality film...Kodak's  Kodachrome, Ultra Color, and Portra, or Fuji's Velvia come to mind. The color via film can also more saturated. Look at the comparison in the links below.

Expanding on LEM's answer, optics is important as well as nice. 10 mb, is just size. Optics produce clarity. A Sony point and shoot with a Carl Zeiss lens will have a better picture than a low quality Holga with a plastic lens. A Leica (which is film) will produce better photos than anything.

Answer 2

I was reading recently that to reproduce the quality of 35mm film, a camera needs to have around 20 megapixels. Medium and large format is 50 to 100 megapixels. So in theory, no, a digital camera cannot reproduce better prints than film. I however will say that done right, a digital camera can produce stunning results; even topping the quality of film. But film just has a more crisp feel. Another thing that you overlooked, though, is dynamic range. Film has better dynamic range, or latitude; meaning more stops separate pure black from pure white. Digital has a lower cutoff, and produces results closer to slide film. Dynamic range aside, you'd be hard pressed to tell the difference between a good digital image from a good image taken with film.

Answer 3

Yes... but... there's lot of but's here...

This will only be true if all of the following holds:

1. High quality film is used (not kodak rolls you buy in drug store)

2. Very good and clear optics is used. That means SLR camera, because I don't think any p&s have lenses good enough to resolve more than 10mp camera can. The thing is both film and digital camera can only capture as much detail as the lens projects on a film or sensor. If a lens is not capable of projecting a high enough resolution, both film and 10mp digital will capture the exact same amount of information that is equivalent to it's best performance level.

3. You enlarge it big enough to see the difference. Even with the 10mp   provided good optics and good sensor (again, we are talking about digital SLR quality sensor, not p&s) you will probably not see a difference with 11x14 blow-up, or even arguably 10x20 (ok, this is where you MAY be able to start seeing difference). If you print 10x20 and above, or crop the image equivalently, then you may start noticing the difference between high quality film and high quality digital.

So all in all, unless you're going for the extreme blow-ups, it's far more important what kind of optics (again p&s optics is not the best) you use and what kind of media/sensor (again - good film, or good quality digital sensor = dSLR in later case) than the actual media type.

So for 99% of those who take photographs today, digital is very well up to the par on quality with film, if not superior as far as final print quality is concerned. Even those with 5-6mp cameras in general should not worry about it. Again, in both worlds - factor #1 is optics.

LEM.