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> A second hand DSLR setup is going to be roughly the same price or less.

And if you get one with Pixel Shift, you can get way higher resolutions than the 22MP they're offering (e.g. my cheapo Olympus gets 40MP JPEG or 64MP RAW from a 16MP sensor.)





You’re for sure exceeding the linear resolving power of 35mm film at 40MP or 64MP.

However, a Bayer-filtered sensor has lower color resolution, since each pixel only sees one color. So the pixel shift really helps quite a bit here since the sensor (and Bayer array) are shifting relative to the film multiple times per exposure.

High-quality film scanners maintain color resolution by using linear sensors without Bayer filtering. But they’re slow and expensive.


All the current Nikon Z bodies (and probably other brands too) have different levels of pixel shift where it’ll take 4 or 8 images and basically cancel out that it’s a bayer sensor. The bayer array is a 4 pixel pattern, so it moves one pixel to the right then one down and then one back to capture all 3 channels for each individual pixel. For things like film scanning it works flawlessly, I use it all the time.

Then it’ll do a 16 or 32 shot stack in order to do the same thing but with more resolution.


It’s been a feature of Olympus (now OM System) high-end cameras for years. I did not realize that Nikon had picked it up as well.

Some modern 35mm emulsions can record ~500 megapixels worth of detail, but good luck getting all that detail in a digital scan.

https://www.adox.de/Photo/films/cms20ii-en/


500 megapixels can have less detail than an old 1 mpix digital from 2001.

[Image resolution is a very complicated topic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image_resolution) and megapixel count, or even lines/mm does not tell the full story.


The scan is the least of the problems - good luck getting to that level of detail with mostly vintage lenses, balancing depth of field and diffraction, keeping the film perfectly flat, on a stable enough tripod with no vibration whatsoever; developing perfectly in the dedicated developer. Yes, it's impressive but no, it's not relevant to the average user or hobbyist.

I wonder how this compares to Technical Pan, which I imagine it was modeled after.

The Olympus pixel shift bodies are underappreciated stand cameras. The quality is just bananas.



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