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Comment by foldr | Hacker News Reader

> There is literally nothing that film cameras can do that digital camera's can't do, and in most cases do better.

Like the other posters, I disagree that this is relevant. However, there are no practically affordable large format digital cameras, and the depth of field effects and resolution that you can get from a 4x5 or 8x10 view camera still can't be obtained digitally. (At 2000dpi, 4x5 is 96MP and 8x10 is 320MP. You can get that resolution from a decent consumer flatbed.)

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The resolution of digital cameras is limited by optical diffusion, not megapixel count, and since this applies just as much to film cameras your 2000dpi is irrelevant.

DPI of final print, not the sensor. Large format cameras could even have larger DPI than an SLR and still get vastly better pictures. Large format CCDs exist, but are very expensive, and of course have different performance characteristics than film.

It'a limited by diffusion at this point for full frame sensors, but it would be possible to get more resolution from a larger sensor, which of corse is exactly what you get from large format film.

Depth of field, though, is limited by the sensor's dimensions, which is drastically different between film and digital. A 35mm film equivalent digital camera is already a pretty expensive "full-frame", a mid-format digital cameras are available at the price of a mid-luxury car and large format digital is not available for a consumer at all.

depth of field has nothing to do with sensor size, it's only related to focal length. the advantage of large/medium format is that longer focal lengths have a wider field of view than 35mm.

Well, I won't get into semantics fight and will concede this to you. Yet, you are still looking at the fact that you can take pictures with a film/glass camera that are either very expensive or impossible to take with a digital one. Specifically, you won't be able to get the same depth of field with the same composition of the frame for the reasons we both seem to understand.

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