As I suspect, there will be a place for film for many years to come for a variety of reasons, although it will remain a niche market compared to the dominance now of digital.

A report from interviews at Photokina 2008 appears to confirm that use of film is starting to rise again for creative artistic purposes and for professionals needing greater resolution.

They assert that the greatest system resolution physically possible from the new 21mp full frame 35mm dSLR cameras when used with the best prime lenses is ~80lp/mm compared to 160lp/mm with 120 film using new high resolution films such as Rollei ATP combined with hiqh quality optics such as Zeiss Makro Planar ZF 2/50 mounted on a tripod which supposedly give 200mp image quality.

Ken Rockwell’s blogs also support the superiority of 120 film over digital capture for large prints.

See post-script on his comparisons of the Nikon D3, D700 and Canon 5D MI which by they way shows the 5D images seems better than the D3 but not as good as 120 film.

He discusses comparisons of 20″x30″ prints here