MF Film vs Digital - film and sensor size

[StingerNikon]

It looks like digital sensors for MF are still not good enough.
Even expensive sensors have size which is significantly smaller than MF film.

What about quality of pictures in terms of depth of field, volume...?

For me it looks like if we compare DX and FX.
You can buy a digital back but you don't use the whole glass of MF lenses. It's like using FX lenses on a DX body.

Of course there are a lot of advantages of digital and probably this topic of film versus digital was discussed several times but what do you think?

 

[cowasaki]

Silicon slices are a certain size and they all have faults as the size of a chip or sensor increases you get more wastage in fitting them onto a circle AND a single fault will affect a larger percentage of your yield. Imagine if the sensor was a square 6cm x 8cm and the diameter of the circle was 12cm. You would get ONE per slice and if there is a fault in the area of the sensor the whole slice is gone. If they are 2x3cm then you can get 8 in the same space as the above sensor but lots more in the rest of the slice which would not have been big enough for a large sensor. This is the reason that FF sensors are more expensive but also the reason that MF are FAR more expensive.

Also there is the law of demand. When you sell only a few MF sensors and with their problems they are always going to be rather expensive.

 

[dazzajl]

MF digital is based on the 645 format and whilst lots of the backs available are crop sensors, there are a good selection that are full frame.


Mine is about a 1.3 crop I think but unlike with the dlsr's based on 35mm cameras there are fewer lenses made to offer users ultra wide options.

 

[mho]

I would take Digital MF over Film MF any day even given the price differences.

My digi backs are a 1.3 and 1.1 crop

I still run a Canon 35mm digital system as well, but if you want quality you just reach for the MFD system.

It also opens up the world of using large format camera with the digi backs, I for one wouldn't be without my sinar and cambo cameras.

As always its different gear for different jobs.

 

[HoppyUK]

Comparing film to digital is complicated. There are a lot of factors and a lot of variables within each factor. Eg, it has almost nothing to do with the number of pixels so it is almost impossible to calculate.

The best comparisons I have seen, taking everything into account by looking at big prints from hi-res film scans compared to direct digital camera output, suggests that overall digital image quality from full frame is comparable to the best 645 format film.

This fits with my own experience in that my old 40D was a good match for anything I got from 35mm film. And I guess that would then extrapolate to so-called medium format digital being roughly equal to 6x9cm film or something like that. And in turn, that would suggest that 4x5in film and upwards has no digital rival (aside from scanning backs).

The depth of field comparison is easily done by multiplying with crop/magnification factor.

Not sure if this is what you were asking!

 

[woof woof]

I hung on to film but as digital took over I think that the processing labs just gave up. Maybe cost cutting did it. Whatever the cause the last straw for me was a batch of film that came back with hairs and specks and all sorts of crap, so I took the negatives in again, and again and then I gave up. Since then film has only been curiosity for me but had the processing lab continued to do a good job I'd probably still be using film now. Instead the poor quality drove me to digital.

 

[Mr_T]

I think another limitation apart from the expense of the silicon chips is the heat that a substantially larger sensor would create. I believe that the huge CCD sensors used for some astro work are nitrogen cooled for this reason. I think for the most part digital MF sensors don't really need to be all that much larger, when you consider the pixel density that has been obtained by some manufacturers it would just be overkill.

I personally got bored shooting digitally and find perverse fun from the effort and expense of shooting on 135 and 120. It's also nice to be able to do the equivalent of swapping my sensor just by buying a different brand or type of film. Comparisons between the two formats are pointless because figures, technical explanations and diagrams don't have anything to do with how a photograph makes you feel. It's all down to personal choice.