Are you shooting wide open with a fast lens?
Sure, I shoot some wide open at f2, 2.4, 2.8 etc. depending on lens, but not that much. Very little commercial, even editorial work is shot at F2 and even then it's for that dreamy, eyes only in focus portrait look and I don't do a whole lot of dreamy, eyes only in focus portrait work.
This is more the exception rather than the rule for me.
The thing is all cameras have their plus and minuses. Could I do the work I do with my Contax and use a Hasselblad or a DF? Sure. Might go about it slightly different, but . . . sure.
The other thing is I also use 35mm, when 35mm is required and not because of pixels, though I just like using a medium format camera sometimes.
Actually would 95% of the time if it wasn't for the pressures of commercial work and shooting in compressed production days.
Few people will argue that 35mm is usually easier and easier is usually faster.
The real thing I don't like about digital 35mm is the vertical crop. Regardless of the red lines I still see a skinny frame but for horizontal work FF 35mm makes sense.
The second real thing I don't like about 35mm digital is unlike 35mm film cameras, actually make that 90% of all film cameras, 35mm digital is hard to manually focus. There is something small and very weird about 35mm digital optical ground plastic.
I've tested this about 100 times shooting background plates, but the focusing screen in 35mm digital cameras shows more focus than the actual file. I don't know why, just know it does with all of my nikons and canons.
It's an easy thing to test out. think about shooting a background in different degrees of out of focus. Look though the optical viewfinder and you can read a sign in the background, but the actual file becomes much more out of focus . . . much more.
At least with my Contax and probably the blad and phase, what you see in the optical viewfinder gets much closer to matching what I shoot, at least in the viewfinder-to-file.
Anyway, to me most of this is a mute point. Sure there is some focus change in recomposing, but I adjust manually and do so it's not a big deal, takes no time.
BTW: Fred, I don't really see any of this as a Nikon vs. MFD world. For some maybe, but for most probably not. I understand you had your issues with Phase and I know better than most that Phase can be challenging when dealing with them directly, though I am sure if you have purchased your DF/phase from one of the two dealers on this board it would have been resolved in a much better way. I know them both and the Atlanta dealer just helped me with an HMi purchase in a way that no dealer I work with in L.A. could do and not just in cost but service and knowledge of the product.
IMO
BC