5000 lp/mm Protein Film and advantage with usual lenses ?

[Mustafa Umut Sarac]

If I am not wrong film resolution is 80 lp/mm and lens resolution is lower or higher. I am thinking to inkjet rhodopsin protein solution on to empty 35mm film and heat, dry and expose with camera while red led light pulses after the each shot to stabilise the rhodopsin protein. If it works , its capable to record 5000 lp/mm.

But how higher resolution film acts with lower resolution lens ? Would that protein film capable to record more than the lens sees ? What is the advantage ?

Mustafa Umut Sarac
Istanbul

 

[Dr Croubie]

I'm going to have to quote a digital test here, but the results should hold.
Roger at Lensrentals tested some lenses on a 21MP camera. Then he tested the same lenses on a 36MP camera (both 24x36mm). The lens on the better sensor resolved more lp/mm than the same lens on the lesser sensor.

So that should also translate to film. Putting the same lens on better film you should get higher numbers. You'll get nowhere near 5000lp/mm, no glass is that good, and diffraction will be happening from wide open, but it should *technically* be possible to get more detail than a regular film.

In short, the end product is an asymptotic equation involving both film/sensor and lens capabilities. Increase either one and the output will increase. But keep increasing the same one and you'll get diminishing returns and you won't be able to tell the difference.
So 5000lp/mm film will do better than 50lp/mm film with all but the worst lenses. But there will be a point (depending on the lens, maybe 1000lp-film? maybe 2000lp-film? maybe only 200lp-film?) where you won't be able to tell the difference to 5000lp-film.

Of course, the question remains 'why', but i'll side with anyone who says 'why not?'

 

[Mustafa Umut Sarac]

How Zeiss Biogon 400 lp/mm or old Leitz with 250 lp/mm performs on 80 lp/mm film ? This is reverse of the above question.

 

[dorff]

How Zeiss Biogon 400 lp/mm or old Leitz with 250 lp/mm performs on 80 lp/mm film ? This is reverse of the above question.

Unless you plan to enlarge to the size of a barn door, I do not see how such high resolution on 35 mm would be useful. It could, however, be more useful in micro formats. A 100x enlargement from 35 mm gives 2.4m x 3.6 m. At 500 lp/mm on the film, that translates to 127 dpi printed at that output size, i.e. overwhelmingly more detail than what can be appreciated by the human visual system. It corresponds to roughly 216 MP.

In essence, there is no way of extracting that level of resolution, short of photographing digitally through a microscope and stitching tens (or hundreds) of images together. I am not aware of any film scanner that will come close to even 250 lp/mm on 35 mm format (or any other, for that matter). To enlarge to the degree necessary would take a very special enlarger lens, as well. It would need a very wide aperture, and one would have to use it fully open, simply to avoid the worst of diffraction. The same applies to the taking lens. I think the only lenses that have a chance are certain industrial lenses, and then for very limited photographic circumstances, e.g. very specific focus distance, flat field etc.

While the notion of grainless, unlimited resolution film sounds nice, I am personally already there with Acros (or TMax100 for that matter). The total resolution follows more or less the following formula:

Rtotal = 1 / (1/Rlens + 1/Rfilm)

Therefore, at some point very close to the lens resolution limit, the film resolution starts to have virtually no further impact regardless of how high it goes. If you plot the curve (Rtotal vs Rfilm while keeping Rlens constant), it will show you where meaningful gain is no longer achievable.

BTW, this formula only applies up to the point of image capture, but could be expanded to include the reproduction elements as well, i.e. scanning or enlarging lens etc. Diffraction needs to be taken into account in the lens resolution, both taking lens and scanning/enlarging lens.