DonB wrote:

I have kept my quality film SLR kit, thinking I would use it
reasonably often, but my 4mp digital is so darned convenient, that in
2 years the SLR has stayed in it's bag. It's easy to lust for the
latest digital SLR, but I was wondering how good film prints, through
a good quality scanner, compare with a 5 or 8mp digital camera, on
screen or printed.
Anyone done this?


Yes, several times in print. Generally the camera wins. The Canon D60
knocked Velvia scanned on a Nikon 4000 dpi scanner into a cocked hat for
A3 magazine repro, and that was two years ago. The Sigma SD10 on an
exact size basis (that is, cropping the Velvia 100F slide down to the
same area as the small digital sensor and scanning at the same effective
resolution) showed that film really can't compete, especially in terms
of capturing usable, clean highlight and shadow detail simultaneously.

Have a look at the second page of:

http://www.freelancephotographer.co.uk/sigmaSD10.pdf

I'm sorry, it is a very large PDF (4.4 megs) because it has been filed
at 300 dpi printable resolution - same as the original magazine pages -
to enable people to zoom in up to 400 per cent on the pages and still
see image detail correctly.

The comparative illustrations of Velvia 100F and Sigma SD10 show that in
terms of sharp detail, and especially in terms of retention of fine
highlight detail, the digital camera easily betters scanned film. Not to
mention the colour aspect. The test could just as easily have been
conducted using a Canon 300D, Nikon D70 or any decent 6 megapixel camera
shooting raw files. If shots were taken as JPEG in camera (which the
Sigma is incapable of doing) then generally the highlight/shadow detail
will be a little curtailed - a raw file has a full dynamic range, and
you can process it so that everything is retained. Kodak have a format
called ERI-JPEG (Extended Range) which is supposed to do this but I was
still able to get better results from raw files with the latest Kodak
camera.

Words of caution - generally, the 8 megapixel consumer cameras are not
especially good and won't have the same capabilities. 5 megapixel
cameras like the Olympus E-1 certainly do. All modern DSLRs, regardless
of make, yield quality results more easily; while you can batten down a
Minolta A2's settings and force it to produce a superb file, you can
shoot freely with a Canon 300D set on auto everything and it will do the
same effortlessly.

David