Originally posted by biz-engineer
It looks like apsc DSLR can produce prints equivalent of what could be produced with 24x36mm film, full frame DSLR can produce as good or better prints than what medium format film was capable of, and medium format digital can produce what 4x5" film is able to produce as prints. That's something to be aware of and to be grateful for.
So now when I use the K1, it's like using a medium format film, plus the autofocus , speed and convenience of digital. And if I'd use a medium format digital kit, it'd be like shooting 4x5 film, with regards to print quality (and without considering film grain aesthetics).[COLOR=Silver]
Originally posted by Sir Nameless This is good to know, thanks.
Absolutely!
What you get with 4x5 that you don't get with a conventional digital camera, be it APS-C, full frame or medium format, is the flexible camera body that bellows cameras feature.
What you lose then, is the tilt/ shift capability that large format gives every lens, not just the few specialized ones that you can stick onto a DSLR, and more importantly for landscape photographers, is the huge depth of field that can be had via swings and tilts of the film.
When I was still shooting film, I was simply unable to secure adequate depth of field with my medium format gear (Pentax 6x7) when doing landscape work. I didn't do much with 35mm because the image quality simply wasn't there in a postage stamp sized negative.
I'm now shooting with a full frame K1, and still find I often cannot acquire sufficient depth of field that was routine for 4x5. The solution for me has been to do focus stacking, but that means sometimes doing a couple of dozen exposures to get similar depth of field to what I was able to secure on sheet film.
It's not just about megapixels and noise sometimes, and it's something to be aware of when deciding what equipment one is going to use.
4x5 film has about 15 times the area of 35mm film. A decent 35mm scanner these days will give something like a 20mp scan, while a drum scanner, which is, admittedly, outside the price range of most hobbyists, will give somewhere around a 720mp scan of 4x5 sheet film, presuming my math is correct.
I expect that in reality, the 80mp figure cited is closer to realistic for most people. And with this in mind, I wouldn't bother shooting film of any format with the intention of scanning it. It is far to easy to shoot everything on a digital camera using multiple exposure techniques and combining files in post processing to both gain pixels and gain depth of field.