Resolution is not super-additive
The issue is quite simple. Doing a "ideal" contact print and developing to continuous tone of SPUR Orthopan UR film material won't and can't deliver 400 lp/mm. It can't deliver 350 lp/mm either--- the maker of the film puts the figure much lower. All the self-proclaimed optical tzadiks at Zeiss can't change this and make a camera and lens based optical system deliver 400 lp/mm in continuous tone (pictorial contrast) using a film that can deliver, at best, a signifcantly lower resolution in ideal contract prints. What Zeiss might be able to design (and I trust they could) is a system to deliver 400 lp/mm at high contrast--- the said film can deliver significantly more than 400 lp/mm in ideal contract prints at, for instance, 1:1000. For document copy systems this is cool and a milestone but totally irrelevant to the said SPUR developers and OEMed microfilms. It, however, makes good misleading copy. Zeiss wants to sell objectives to techie-twits and this is the kind of specifications that get them all stiff. The realities that the differences in the final print in real continuous tone pictorial photographic systems (the whole process chain from capture to print) between the new Zeiss wunderglass and a well crafted photograph using fine grained film in a 1940 camera in standard enlargement ratios (even up to 12x16" prints from 35mm negatives) using standard enlargers and paper is less than spectacular is aside the marketing point......
Where the microfilm approach, however, does really show-off is in large enlargement ratios which are not as uncommon in subminiature photographic praxis. In MINOX systems (which includes a camera with high resolution objective, loads of depth-of-field and flat film which then get enlarged using modified point-source enlargers) we have gotten some quite amazing results...