freetime101 wrote:
Interesting story Dan, so Phase One is equal to 4 x 5 film, and the D810 is comparable to the Phase One (up to 30 x 40 prints)? So we can draw the conclusion that the D810 is comparable to 4 x 5 film? Interesting indeed!
They are not "the same" per se, but the interesting thing is the very high level of quality we can obtain from current cameras.
The "proof is in the pudding" tests were to make prints at a given size and compare very carefully. As digital improved, some years ago large MF digital systems did achieve overall parity with 4x5. Again, there are differences between using a 4x5 sheet of film and a smaller digital sensor, but both can produce excellent quality in very large prints.
We were all shocked by his print comparisons between the 36MP full frame photographs and the 80MP Phase One shots. I would not claim that a 36MP full frame digital capture has the same detail and so forth as a 80MP MF capture — but when we looked at sections of 30" x 40" prints from both sources we were unable to make a better/worse distinction among them. And, of course, the difference was even less between the Pentax 645z and the Phase One.
There is, no doubt, some huge print size at which the marginal differences will become visible, but realistically almost no one is going to print that large!
Dan
Dec 20, 2016 at 03:55 PM
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