"I find this thread amusing as I naively stated in passing on another forum that digital (I quoted the D2x) surpassed film and I was in return insulted by someone who prints his own slides and claimed I was talking nonsense and lacked objectivity. Well I used to use Fuji Provia 100F, a decent tripod and ball head, a decent lens, and routinely stuck a bean bag on top, so I do not doubt my ability to get sharp images. IMO a 6MP APS sensor can almost match the resolution of Provia 100F (not quite though) but where it shines is the smoothness of tones and the absence of graininess and hence the image quality is IMO far superior. As for a camera such as a Canon 1Ds, well, I wouldn't presume to add to what Michael has said."
Having done a fair amount of these types of comparisons, I'd have to say that it wasn't until the 1Ds that a DSLR could match the sharpest of the normal contrasted films. Looking at film through a microscope defintely shows higher resolved detail than on even the best scanners or through the best enlarging lenses. With a 1DsMK2 and the finest lenses at the sharpest apertures, the digital captures are beyond what you could hope to get from scanned or projected 35mm film, and up to a certain printed size, will best most medium format films. I was perhaps one of the later adopters of DSLR technology, as I was always doing my comparisons using a Howtek 8000 ppi drum scanner, compared to which, all the 6-8 megapixel cameras fell short.
Most of my work is for commercial assignments, so the Canon's are more than sufficient, but I have been making a series of 2'X3' prints in the last week to see how well the 1DsMK2 looks at that moderate size, and all I can say is that I am as blown away as everyone I've shown any of the prints to. The subjects range from Bodie landscapes to portraits to studio product shots, and all of them look to my extremely discriminating eye, better than anything I could get from Howtek drum scanned 6X7cm transparency. I'm not sure where the size limits are for these types of files, but I expect that at a certain size, film enlargements, even with less detail, may start looking better if digital artifacts start becoming apparent. I guess I'll have to swallow the ink and make a 40X60 from the MkII and see just how it hold up at that size.