Well i guess that is marketing mumbo jumbo by Hasselblad then? Maybe i'm like the many sheep before me that look at numbers, 16 vs 14, 16 sounds better to me. 14bit is what Canon's offer. I figured MF has more range than the 35mm 5DMKII's i've been using.
Am i wrong?
Yes, unfortunately.
There is a myth of better DR in MF digital. It used be true, a fact; but when belief persists when the fact no longer does, then it becomes a myth.
8 or so years ago when DSLRS had high sensor readnoise (around 20 electrons), in the same ballpark as MFDBs, then it was true that MF digital had a substantial DR advantage.
But it is now a myth, largely because people (and indeed manufacturers' advertising blurbs) only look at one half of the DR equation: full well capacity. MF has larger pixels (for a given total pixel count), so it has larger FWC.
Ever since CMOS replaced CCD for DSLRs, they have been eating into that advantage, by driving down sensor readnoise; currently the best are only 2 or 3 electrons at mid-ISOs. But at mid-ISO you are utilising less of the FWC than at base ISO, so this renders the mid-ISO DR of DSLRs very good but not spectacular (usually 11-and-a-bit stops). At base ISO, you get the complete FWC but countering that, DSLRs still have stubbornly high low-ISO readnoise because the main contributor is the ADC, not the sensor itself. So again you usually get 11-and-a-bit or maybe 12 stops. All told, this means that DSLRs are around par with the MFDBs, which also have 12 +/- a bit stops.
However Nikon seems to have cracked the problem with ADC noise at low ISO in the D3x, and this explains its huge DR score (13.65 stops at base ISO) in the DXO tests.
So if you "figured MF has more range", you have to realise that there is no magic involved in MF digital. It obeys the same rules as 35mm and smaller digital. If or when Kodak and DALSA can get their sensor readnoise down from 11 or 13 electrons (their current best) to 2 or 3 electrons, then MF will regain the upper hand. It certainly
can be that low for large CCDs, but it nearly always requires much longer readout times than photographers are likely to put up with. Astronomers are not as fussy about waiting
.