Just got some prints back. Printed by Calumet. Very Nice. The depth of field on Medium Format is just breath taking. Since I'm new to the Format, I didn't want to use it on this weekends Maternity Shoot as my Main camera but will start using it more often. Just might make the jump.
Heres a sample
You can get high megapixel images suitable for enlarging by stitching multiple images. I use a tilt-shift lens but I dont see why you couldnt use what you have if you buy a nodal rail to prevent parallax for in-close subjects and maybe a panoramic head to make life easy. This route would be better for landscapes than portrait work. But it can and is used by some of the best photogs. Learn how to stitch well and you can create 100MP files and use your current gear.
Here is a guy that uses stitching to do wedding photos: http://strobist.blogspot.com/2012/04/ryan-brenizers-panoramic-portraiture.html
Doing brenizer or shooting MF is a lot different. I would prefer MFDB, cause you can get what you need in one shot, no stitching needed (but possible even with it .
Main factor for portraits with MFDB should be real sensor size, not mpix. Bigger is simply better.
Its expensive, but lens are quite cheap, if you manage to bolt that MFDB to some camera that allows good manual focus. Hasselblad H1 is decent choice for this.. (and it can take film backs too .
When you think of "crop" you also need to consider in terms of what format. In other words, when thinking of a crop with a MFDB, we're thinking in terms of a 645 sensor---not a 35mm DSLR sized sensor. So even with a "cropped MFDB sensor" it's still a relatively large piece of real estate.
Current generation MFDBs are full-frame Dalsa CCD sensors, used in the P65+, IQ160/180, and IQ260/280. Other backs may have a slight crop, such as P45+ is a 1.1 and P30+ is a 1.3 crop on a 645 sized sensor or format. It is helpful to consider format "crop" when considering your camera platform and lenses (field of view).
Ok. So a P30+ from back in the days is a crop. Dors it work the same. 1.1 crop timrs the focal length then divide because its MF to get the equivalent of 35mm lol
I'm not aware of any "beginners guide" to medium format digital. Changes come so quickly that I think any sort of guide would quickly become dated.
If you're looking towards Mamiya (and the 150mm focal length), you might want to consider a more up to date body, and that means considering at the low end the Mamiya 150mm AF f/3.5 (for Phase/Mamiya 645AF/AFD) or better yet, the Phase 150mm F/2.8 D series, one of the best lenses around and with a minimum focusing distance of about three feet.
It took some time but I finally did it, especially without having to Sell off all my Canon gear. I just Upgraded the Body.... Selling off the Mamiya 645 1000s. I will shoot some more pics from the Solid 645 and then the rest with the update... arrives Monday
.