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Ridley Scott's 'Alien' Will Finally be Released in 4K HDR For Its 40th Anniversary (arstechnica.com)
The long wait is over for sci-fi and horror film buffs: the 1979 classic "Alien" will be released in 4K and HDR for the film's 40th anniversary. The remaster will be available on an UltraHD Blu-ray disc. From a report: 20th Century Fox and partners embarked on an effort to remaster the film in 4K last year, under supervision by Pam Dery and Director Ridley Scott. "Alien" was originally shot on 35mm film, and the remaster was made using the original negative. Remastering older films for the UltraHD era has sometimes proven challenging for studios. In many cases, original film masters have degraded, and 4K on a 65-inch TV is adept at revealing graininess and other flaws that result from aged or damaged film.
The short answer is neither.
The actual answer becomes a lot more complicated because ultimately film is analog, and the smallest conceptual "pixel" in a 35mm film print is way higher than 4K. (The answer I found on Google is that it's closer to 175MP, while 4K is a "mere" 8MP.)
However, that ignores the realities of film grain and focus. And these factors can make it so that going all the way to 4K is kind of pointless, because you're no longer getting more details out of the image, you're just getting more noise. Of course, these factors depend on the type of film used and the lighting conditions. Some 35mm shots are probably in quite good focus and have low enough film grain that they'd make excellent 4K transfers.
Which also leads to a problem where not all shots are created equal - darker shots are more likely to show off far more film grain than brighter shots.
There is no real answer to this question, but to invent one, I'd say 35mm film usually seems to be better quality than 1080p, but somewhat worse quality than low-noise 4K shot with modern digital equipment. But it depends greatly on how the 35mm was originally shot. (And it's trivially easy to shoot bad digital 4K that will look worse than any 35mm print.)
(I know nothing about all this, but here's what I found after several Google and Wikipedia searches. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.)
"What is 35mm film really equivalent to when it comes to 4K, 1080, etc? Can the film pick up the detail to translate to HD?"
35mm film can be scanned in at 2,400 (and higher) DPI.
35mm is 36 × 24 mm.
At 2,400 DPI, this is means 3,402 × 2,268 pixels.
That's pretty close to the TV/consumer media 4K UHD, which is 3840×2,160.
This particular 35 mm print is probably well-preserved, so 4K should pick up the details.
To get ready to sell the rest of the movies in the same way. Start with 1 and move up the series.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"