To answer the OP... I'm a professional photographer. Fashion and Celebrity. (Landscape for fun too and sometimes as part of Fashion books)
I have shot most formats for about 30 years. Film and digital... (also shot with 22 MP MFDB)
When I tested a D800 and D800E I decided I would not need MFD anymore.
The main advantage I saw in MFD was dynamic range. This is because I come from film and still shoot film.
Well the D800 was announced and described as a high dynamic range camera I said to my self "yea yea I've heard that before".
The first sample images that came out didn't look that good and led me to believe it was a bit of hype.
After testing it it was clear to me that the d800 had better dynamic range especially in the blacks and was a big leap forward for 35mm digital.
The newer phase One IQ backs do still have a fraction more color depth, but it is a very small difference and the D800 is no slouch when it comes to color.
While I love medium and large format film, medium format digital was never in my eyes the "real thing"
when it comes to medium format. Medium format digital is sub 60x45mm and I always liked the look of larger formats like 6x8cm film and
larger. Medium format digital is really at the bottom of medium format size and only scratched the surface of the look of medium and larger format.
The difference in this look between a FF 24x36mm and a MF sensor at this point is very subtle and IMO does not justify the
limitations of the Phase One and Hasselblad H cameras. This is even more the case when comparing these limitations to both 35mm Digital and "proper" medium format film.
As a result I have dropped medium format digital in favor of the combination of 35mm digital and medium format film plus large format 8x10 film and direct to paper.
Cons of medium format digital IMONot reliable. The backs are really quite good, but the cameras are terrible.
Less so for Hasselblad H, Phase One AF and DF bodies are simply not reliable enough.
Limited lenses. Extremely limited tilt shift lenses. Limited fast lenses, no image stabilization.
Some of the lenses are very nice, but while for example the Schnieder Phase One lenses have leaf shutters for some silly reason
they have a 5 blade iris resulting in unpleasant bokeh on high contrast subjects if stopped down even one stop.
The cheap (in comparison) Nikon 85mm 1.4G has a 9 blade round iris.
My large format lenses have perfectly round irises.
5 blade:
Proper round iris:
Here is a comparison between three MF lenses... as you can see the old Mamiya RZ 110mm is far nicer
Bokeh is simply nicer on the older lenses and the newest best 35mm lenses like the Nikon 85mm 1.4 or Canon 85mm 1.2
Here are a couple of images I found on flickr that shows this....
A lot more with this combo on his flickr pages:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/-451/Focusing issuesWhile the sensors and lenses are very sharp the focusing, both manual and auto are very limited and in many ways inadequate.
While MF does have nice shallow depth of field it is difficult to get a high hit rate when shooting wide open.
Both the Hasselblad and Phase One DF do not have high magnification viefinders for manual focusing.
While Hasselblad has a waist level finder it can pretty much only be used for horizontal framing.
Mamiya does still make the RZ with a waist level finder and rotating backs, but the finder is not make for a digital back crop
so the magnification is not adequate.
I mainly used digital backs on a Fuji GX680 due to the much better viewfinders and full line of tilt shift lenses from 50mm to 500mm.
Hasselblad does have true focus that compensates when focusing at the center of the frame and re framing, but its just better to be able to focus without
re framing.
No more film supportPhase One has totally dropped film support for it 645 cameras.
Hasselblad only has film and digital support with the HVX, but you can only buy it through some wonky upgrade deal.
Film creatively is still a very valid medium. Dropping it on a camera system that is a heavy investment is just illogical.
So anyway my point is that if you don't need to make 40x60inch prints that need to be viewed very close up MFD
just is not necessary anymore.
Here is a link to a comparison done by the owner of an IQ180 80MP flagship MFDB.
http://www.circleofconfusion.ie/d800e-vs-phase-one-iq180/In conclusion here are a few images to illustrate my point of using a combination of 35mm digital and larger MF film.
Here is a shot taken with care wide open with a "vintage" Canon 1ds 11 MP with an inexpensive 100mm f2
and a crop to show the fine detail:
My D800 is sharper than this.
And here are a couple of examples of 6x8 film:
Higher res here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/46355539@N08/5458121808/sizes/o/in/photostream/Crop:
Crop