It takes specific equipment and good technique, and often you are limited by the shallower depth of field or diffraction. Medium and large format can get more because it's more film area, albeit not as much as you think in practice. You can easily get 50 mp full frame digital nowadays - although the lenses to drive that are another problem. Even with 4000 dpi drum scans it's hard to go much beyond like 25 megapixels of effective resolution.

Today's top-end full frame cameras have better resolution than 35mm film. They really are a fascinating company.Ĭheck out the 1001 Nights of Nikkor, a fascinating series of stories about all that stuff. They also made unique 180-degree orthographic lenses for atmospheric surveying - measure cloud cover/etc by photographing the sky every day and get the full horizon to horizon in one frame. The Nikonos series underwater cameras were really the only thing in their class, with unique water-contact optics that avoided rainbow diffraction from the port by putting the optics right against the water. Nikon actually has a history of doing that as well. If you do need it, there is no substitute. Most people don’t need it but it’s certainly unique. It is a modern pro camera that happens to shoot film. The fastest and lowest-light-capable autofocus, the best matrix metering, digital recording of exposure data (just like EXIF but for film!), etc. If you want/need to shoot film and you shoot subjects that are commonly done with modern digital SLRs and considered out of reach of a film camera, the F6 is the best game in town. Now that is gone I expect demand will increase and indeed we have several customers looking to buy.The F6 is the most advanced and capable film DSLR ever built. “It was not a big surprise as sales were not large, although we would normally expect to sell a few every month. “The F6 was much-loved and the last-ever flagship film camera from Nikon – it is truly the end of an era,” said Gray Levett, founder of central London Nikon specialist, Grays of Westminster. The F6 was a well-specced SLR, featuring a tough but compact dust-and-moisture resistant body, an 11-area AF system with nine cross-type AF sensors, 3D Color Matrix Metering with 1005-pixel RGB sensor and a durable self-diagnostic shutter unit with Kevlar/aluminum alloy shutter blades. The F6 came out in 2004 and was the last in the Nikon F series line-up.

It’s the same story for Japan (source: Nikon Rumors)

European sales were discontinued in October and large US retailers, B+H and Adorama, recently confirmed the same for the States. Nikon has discontinued sales of the F6, its final flagship film SLR.

Nikon f6 film camera