Is a digital camera as good as film for taking electron microscope images?
A. No. At a given magnification, the resolution of commercially available digital cameras doesn’t even come close to what you can get with film. The best available cameras (2k by 2k) cost more than $150,000 and only provide a resolution of around 2000 pixels per inch. In comparison, film has a resolution of approx. 10,000 pixels per inch, counting each silver grain as a pixel. The grayscale depth of film is also much better than a 12-bit digital camera, which only provides 4096 shades of gray. Tip: The lower resolution of the digital camera is more severe at lower magnifications than it is at higher magnifications. To take best advantage of a digital camera, try to shoot pictures at the magnification you will use for printing. This is usually between 3 and 10 times the magnification you would use for film recording. You can also make the images appear sharper by using an unsharp masking filter in Photoshop or another image processing package.
