...was it pure ecstacy going to MF film from purely digital? Would you, even now, with the latest digital and printing equipment still desire to go with MF film for its qualities?
I did it the other way around. Started w/ MF film, and then added a digital back. I'm ambivalent. I like some aspects of digital, but others I don't. Film is often a joy to work with, but it's a pain to digitize.
The digital back is really finicky about over-exposure, even more so than Fujichrome, but, if you avoid over-exposing, the digital has a much wider latitude than chrome films. It is said to be greater than negative films, but I haven't found that to be necessarily the case. For sure, negative films are more forgiving of overexposure.
As for ease of use, I'd have to go with digital, but... once you've scanned your film, everything is nearly the same. The biggest difference is that with film, you have grain and with digital you have noise. And you Always Have Noise. In the shadows, the deepest blacks will never be BLACK, until you make them black with a photoshop adjustment.
Negative film is especially prone to a phenomenon which causes the scanner to enhance the grain. It has to do with the way the light strikes and reflects off the grain, enlarging its 'footprint' on the scanned image. It shows up most strongly in wide areas of continuous color, like the sky. It can be reduced, almost eliminated, by wet-mounting the film but that's a PTA. I only do that for images I'm sure I'll be working with further.
With digital, you tend (or at least I tend) to shoot too danged much. Instead of selecting a shot, I flail away at it. And that ain't good. On a recent trip I shot about 600 frames, and with film I would have done no more than half or even a third that much, and would have come out with at least as many good images.
I probably should mention I shoot landscapes, and so my subjects tend to stand still. If I was shooting wildlife, I'd be using a DSLR, exclusively. As it is, I'll often shoot the same subject with both digital and film, it being very easy to swap the backs. I'll even occasionally shoot with two types of film, as well as digital. That is partly because I'm still learning digital and partly because I think it's cool to compare the various media.
In any event, they are separate media, digital, chrome, and negative. I'm happy that I could dismantle and sell my dark darkroom, and work in the light now. Digital processing of prints is far superior to the old way, but film is often a better place to start than digital for me.
I do have to add, I am very nervous about dropping the digital back. Dropping a film back might be bad, but it wouldn't bankrupt me.