An unfair fight? 35mm vs Medium Format: Nikon D800E and the Leica S2-P
Not sure if this was posted before (sorry if so), but what an amazing comparison. My jaw is still on the floor in regard to how well the D800e (originally $3300) kept up with a $26k camera (and that's body only).
To perhaps throw more gas on the fire, or maybe just muddy the waters some, I could shoot T-Max 100 with my Hasselblad and scan it at 4000 dpi with my Nikon CoolScan LS-8000 and still blow both of them clean off the hinges. 6x6 (A12) at 4000 dpi equals
81 MP
, 6x4.5 (A16) at 4000 dpi equals
67 MP. And I can do it for
one heck of a lot less than any FX or MF digital.
Please excuse the rant but the bottom line to all of this is
who really gives a damn? With digital Photography, just as with computers and
especially cell phones, all this mind numbing
techie crap has gotten completely out of hand. Photography has always been, and
always will be an
ART. Of course there is a technical side to it, just try to learn the Zone System inside and out if you want to see technical, but honestly when all the dust settles and all you have left is
the image, so much of that
el-nerdo techie crap is
as meaningless as tits on a bull. If
some of photography's grandest masters; Adams, Cunningham, Stieglitz, Weston, Eugene Smith, Cartier-Bresson, et al, were still alive and shooting today I think it would be safe to say that none of them would
give a rat's ass about how many megapixels this camera had, or how well it handled ISO 12,600. For them it was all about the image. And long after any of us are nothing but moldy bones, people will
still be looking at their images and still be
awed by the sheer mastery they had over their craft. And they all did it with what most would consider
antiques today.