Last weekend, I came across a scan of a picture from 1990 and realized just
how good current DSLRs are in comparison to film when it comes to "grain" and high-ISO
performance. I had a few minutes and re-created the shot with my Nikon D80 at various
ISOs to pick the one that looks most like the grain of the old film; this is a good
comparison because the 2700dpi scan has almost exactly the same number of pixels as the
D80 produces (the D80 is equivalent to about a 2740dpi scan from 35mm).
Three 100% crops: at center is the scan of Kodak Gold 200 film; on the left is the D80
at ISO 200, and on the right is the D80 at ISO 2500 (no sharpening or noise/grain
reduction was applied to any of the three images). While the digital imager has more
noise in the shadows, the sky has essentially the same character for both digital and film
despite 3.6 stops greater sensitivity from the DSLR.
