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Ziggy,
I want to second Buffy's comments as well as John Poirier's. I am an enthusiastic film shooter and am heavily invested in a hybrid (film+scan) work flow*. Even so, I would be the last to say that scans from any of my negatives (35mm, 6x7, or 4x5) are the same as images from a competent digital sensor for the same format. Even though I can render a true 21+ Megapixel image from a 35mm negative, the characteristics of that image will be significantly different from the negative on which it is based and from a RAW FF digital image of the same subject. Those differences are due to the nature of the both the film and digital sensor media as well as the capabilities of the scanner/camera and the operator.
I may ignite a storm of criticism, but I think it is safe to make the following generalities:
- Film and digital are different. It is best not to do direct comparison, but to consider the strengths of each as a capture medium.
- Certain film characteristics such as grain and certain aspects of local contrast and "luminosity" are difficult to replicate with pure digital capture
- Based on my personal scans from fine-grained 35mm negatives, I believe them to have equivalent actual resolution to my APS-C K10D, though probably not better despite twice the digital resolution (21 vs. 10 Megapixels).
- Scans are not the same as optical prints from the same negatives
- Scan quality is HIGHLY dependent on the scanner technology in combination with operator skill
- While a B&W negative may have enormous dynamic range and tonal information, a scan of that negative will only reflect a limited subset of the available data
- Despite the limitations noted in the point above, I believe that a well-made scan of a B&W negative may be capable of superior tonality when compared to a monochrome conversion of a straight digital capture of the same subject.
- Even the best scans may be degraded in the printing process
Steve
*
I could have easily purchased a nice FF dSLR kit for what I have recently invested in film cameras and scanners.