Film format equivalent resolutions

Created Thursday 11 April 2019

Explanation:
This chart came from a discussion with some friends in 2016 about how various film formats compare to various video formats. It is not, by any stretch of the imagination, to be taken as gospel, especially since things such as film speed (sensitivity) and quality of photographic stock can have effects on the image resolution separately from the frame size. There may well be cases where a particular film might warrant a higher or lower resolution scan than indicated.

Definitions

Gauge - Actual width of the film

Format - Name given to the film format

Pulldown - Direction in which the film moves through the projector

Wid/Hgt - Actual dimensions of an individual frame of the film

FAR - Frame Aspect Ratio - This is the aspect ratio of the project frame not necessarily of the frame on the film. This may differ becasue some formats use aspherical (anamorphic) lenses to compress/decompress the image horizontally.

Xres/Yres - Calculated effective estimated horizontal and vertical resolutions

MPx - Calculated effective estimated resolution in megapixels

Lines - Calculated effective estimated resolution in video lines

k - Calculated effective estimated resolution in k, i.e. horizontal resolution divided by 1024.

Recommendation - suggested resolutions for scanning a film of this type

Gauge Format      Pulldown   Wid.    Hgt.    FAR  Xres Yres   MPx    Lines  k     Recommendation
 8mm  Straight 8  Vertical    4.88mm  3.68mm 1.33  522  394    0.2    394   0.5   360p
 8    Super 8     Vertical    6.22    4.22   1.47  666  452    0.3    452   0.6   480p
 8    Panoramic 8 Horizontal  7.50    5.00   1.50  803  535    0.4    535   0.8   540p or 576p
16    16mm        Vertical   10.26    7.49   1.37 1098  801    0.9    801   1.1   720p
35    Widescreen  Vertical   21.95    9.47   2.32 2354 1013    2.4   1013   2.3   1080p or 2k
35    Techniscope Vertical   22.00    9.47   2.32 2354 1013    2.4   1013   2.3   1080p or 2k
35    Super 35    Vertical   24.00   10.00   2.40 2568 1070    2.7   1070   2.5   1080p or 2k
35    Academy     Vertical   22.00   16.00   1.38 2354 1712    4.0   1712   2.3   1080p, 2k or 4k
35    Cinemascope Vertical   21.95   18.60   1.18 2349 1990    4.7   1990   2.3   4k
35    Vistavision Horizontal 37.72   24.92   1.51 4036 2666   10.8   2666   3.9   4k
70    Todd-AO     Vertical   48.56   22.10   2.20 5196 2365   12.3   2365   5.1   4k
65    Iverksphere Vertical   51.59   37.69   1.37 5520 4033   22.3   4033   5.4   4k
70    IMAX        Horizontal 70.41   52.63   1.34 7534 5631   42.4   5631   7.4   8k