John,
I find your question timely as it is one I had been asking for over a year and finally made a decision and took a direction.
Here is the given:
Shot landscapes for the last 40 years. I have always shot medium format (Hassie 500CM in the ole days) and 4x5. I recently have been shooting the Hasselblad H1 with the 50-110 zoom lens and Fuji Acros film developed in XTol. Currently shoot same film/dev in Ebony 45SU 4x5.
For the last couple of years I have been scanning all of my H1 and 4x5 work on my Howtek Hi-Resolve 8,000 drum scanner. Results from my old negatives in both 2 1/4 and 4x5 are great. Results from any new film and developer are marginal in my judgment compared to what I could get in the past.
In short, film and scanning is a lot of work but it would be worth it if the results demonstrated it.
Unfortunately, what I found was no matter what film and developer I use in my H1/medium format camera the film was no where near as good as what I was using even 15 years ago.
Thus, I recently bought a Canon 1DsMkII with a couple of L series lenses to test against the H1 with film.
My conclusion is that the Canon 1DsMkII is as good, and in many ways better the then H1 was with today’s films!
As a result, I recently sold my H1 and I'm not looking back.
Only way to beat the Canon 1DsMkII with med format is with one of the outrageously expensive digital backs for the H1.
I'm still shooting my 4x5 but I'll admit I'm using the 1DsMkII far more than I expected. I've even had days where I've hiked all day with the 4x5, returned to work on the film/scanner and wondered why I toted it around all day! Now, the Canon is not a light camera BUT with two or three 4GB cards I'm taking images that I would not have bother to set up the 4x5 for and finding that some of these WERE WORTH TAKING! These images would have been missed with the 4x5, especially toward the end of the day when these 60 year old legs are bitching about hiking up and down the trails!
In short, that's what I've learned.
Jack
http://www.shadowsdancing.com