Large format wilderness photographer Ben Horne recently embarked on a little experiment with some help from his friend, Michael Strickland. Horne shoots large format 8×10 slide film, and Strickland has a drum scanner that can scan that film at insanely high resolution. How high? Using a little bit of trickery, Strickland was able to provide Horne with a 709.6-megapixel file to pixel peep in this video.
Take that, 100MP medium format sensors!
To give you an idea of just how high resolution this file is, printed at 300ppi, the resulting print would measure 79.3 x 99.4 inches. As we mentioned, this took a bit of ‘trickery’—namely: Strickland actually had to drum scan the print twice. He first scanned the top half, then the bottom half, and then merged the two scans together in post.
In the video, Horne zooms in to 100% and makes his way around the file. He explains how he shot the image, what sacrifices he had to make regarding sharpness in the closest foreground and furthest background, and shows off just how sharp this thing is in the parts of the image he’s most concerned with.
Check out the full explanation for yourself up top, and then head over to Horne’s YouTube channel for more videos like this one.
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)