Originally Posted by
Pontius Navigator
I think I know what you mean, but to remove doubt, would you care to puncture the sentence?
There's more to photography than just resolution. Contrast, or dynamic range, is also a big issue and from what I hear good old film still has the edge over digital sensors in this regard. You can get a sense of this from looking at what a mobile phone does these days; HDR photographs are a composite of 2, taken with different exposures, and then snaffling the good bits from both to make a HDR image. Ok, so phone camera sensors are pretty rubbish, they're silicon based, not GaAs like any decent CCD that a proper digital imaging system would use. But film still beats a CCD for contrast range.
It underlines how remarkable the human eye is with its ability to see detail in gloomy shadows on a bright sunny day that no digital camera can easily capture.
The other irony is that, by definition, digital scanners are also likely incapable of scanning a film print and capturing the full dynamic range, and flat panel monitors aren't capable of displaying the full dynamic range of the print either (even if the scanner could scan it). So there's likely still the odd occasion where a pair of well tuned Mk 1 eyeballs looking at the film itself will see things that are not apparent any other way.