8x10 vs 35mm

Let's start by saying that not all film was created equal. Let's also say that the comparison picture of 2 slides on a lightbox above was shot with a digital camera, and, yes, we know the highlights have been blown out (it is a digital picture so what do you expect?!) It is sort of disheartening that after all the articles we have written, there are people still emailing us who don't know what the difference is between 8x10 large format film and 35mm film. So, in order to make things abundantly clear, we have an illustration above of 2 actual slides on a light table. The immense slide on the left was taken with an 8x10 large format camera, and the teensy slide on the right was taken with a 35mm SLR camera. Get the picture?

16 megapixel digital SLR cameras just exceed the resolution of 35mm film, and are arguably on par with medium format 645 film. There is, however, a bit of a gap to bridge in the quest to match 8x10 film.