Of course? I don't understand the "of course". I see no fundamental reason why a larger format will give you a greater resolution _per mm_. In fact, I would think that the wider viewing angle for the same focal length would mean that you might get less resolution. The big advantage as I see it of larger formats is that for the same resolution per mm you get much more detail in the frame! I use medium format - I got a Yashica TLR (Rollei clone) for 6 pounds at a charity auction a few years ago, and it got me hooked on it. Recently I damaged my Yashica, so I've just bought a Hasselblad (a good set of accessories is looking rather pricey, though). I'd love to find an 16384*16384 or similar digital back at an affordable price! Heck, if I saw a 4096 * 4096 digital back for my 'Blad below 500 pounds I'd probably buy it, even though that's only 36 lines per mm! I think there are two independent viewpoints here. If you are taking pictures for display on people's computer monitors (e.g. on web sites) you don't need more than a few lines per mm, since the monitor itself will probably only display 3 or 4 pixels per mm (say 2 lines). A 640 * 480 pixel picture is the largest that will display on many people's screens. For this purpose a digital camera of say 1280 * 1024 is probably perfectly adequate. If you're taking pictures to blow up to a foot or two across and print on high quality paper, then most digital cameras are quite inadequate, and a large or medium format or really good 35mm film camera is required. Tony, when you talk about 640 pixels across a 4 inch print being only 6 pixels / 3 lines per mm, you've just stopped looking at film resolution and started looking at print resolution. Don't forget that the standard 35mm negative is generally considered blowable up to as much as 12*8 inches, so 100 lines per mm at the film becomes 12 lines per mm at the print; 3 lines per mm at the print corresponds to 25 per mm at the film. So it is poor resolution, but not the "nonexistent" resolution you were talking about. On the subject of lines per mm, what is the resolution of a typical ccd per mm _at the surface of the chip_? Philip. PS why do people so often talk about blowing 35mm up to 10*8 or 12*10 as the limit? Is it simply standard paper sizes? It's certainly not the aspect ratio of the negative.