Hi,
I'd suggest that Mark's passion for perfection is absolutely real. So he uses medium format with the best stuff he can get.
In my view that all adds up.
- Careful work
- Exact focusing
- Camera shimmed to perfection
- The best lenses available
- The best MFDB available
So I'd suggest he gets better performance out of that platform than most shooters. I'm glad that he tells about his experience.
On the other hand, in the article there are a lot of esoteric references. And he makes the statement that the advantage of the superior equipment will be visible in small prints. Well, fact is that photography is a processing pipeline with printing as the final step. When we print small we discard most of the information at hand. Resolution is limited by the printers native resolution and dithering algorithm. Most of the color space is also lost.
My experience is that doing correct tests is very problematic, partly because the processing pipeline does include steps where we do signal reconstruction. At some stage of the process we apply sharpening which is highly subjective, than we apply color matrix and curves and do individual tuning for colors. With all variables we never can say if the superior results are a consequence of the processing or the underlying signals.
I would say that the great 2006 MFDB shootout here on LuLa went to lengths to make a correct comparison of sharpness. At that time the article got a lot of flak that 4x5" inch Velvia was scanned at to low resolution. I guess that the reason for that was that it was exactly the resolution the authors used in their normal work.
The 2006 test is here:
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/essays/back-testing.shtmlA very good test was published recently, this time comparing large format film with digital:
http://www.onlandscape.co.uk/2011/12/big-camera-comparison/The above tests were 'properly made'. Incidentally, I also made some film vs. digital testing recently and I come to a different conclusion, partly because I look at somewhat different things and partly because I use lesser equipment.
I can also mention that Mark seems to have a lot of respect for DxO, even if it is not obvious from his writing.
Regarding the 6 stop advantage in DR he sees I have some suggestions:
1) He is talking about DR involving texture, so it is a combination of sensor DR and lens MTF
2) Flare will normally also affect DR
3) Mark is comparing MF at low ISO with his Canon EOS 1Ds (mark something) at base ISO where, comparing with a state of the art Nikon (D3X) or Pentax (KT) he would find less difference.
My article
http://echophoto.dnsalias.net/ekr/index.php/photoarticles/38-observations-on-leica-s2-raw-images compares Leica S2 with Nikon D3X based on raw images kindly made available by Lloyd Chambers. My focus at the time was moiré but the article offers some other insight in differences between the two systems and I don't think it is much biased.
Best regards
Erik
Ps. I'd suggest that Mark works with PODAS because he loves MF digital, not the other way around! I also had some direct communication with Mark about specifics of his articles and I got very well written responses promptly.
Mark discounts DXO, but yet DXO refers to the IQ180 as the king of the sensors. Does anyone see a disconnect here? I haven't had the opportunity to work with the IQ180, but it is undoubtedly a very fine instrument and I don't see why he needs to make outrageous claims about 6 additional stops of DR or its marked per pixel superiority to a dSLR.
Getting his passion and love of the craft across is a nice thing to do, but there might be a slight conflict of interest as suggested by a Google search for "podas workshops dubovoy". Those all expense paid trips to some of the most photogenic sites in the world and possible honoraria must also be nice.
Regards,
Bill