Originally Posted by
walter23
I think it's possible to get pretty close to large format film resolution with a medium format digital back and a sharp lens. Some guy sent me a shot from his phase-whatever back for hasselblad shot with one of those fancy schneider digital lenses, and it was pretty damned close to the same resolution as the best scan I can get from my V750 desktop scanner with a sharp transparency - possibly better. Because of the ability of a smaller sensor to capture extremely high resolution and allow movements for architecture with various setups I can't see any drive to develop a 4x5 or 8x10 sized CCD or CMOS sensor (which would be pretty cost prohibitive right now, and perhaps for a very long time).
The one thing you can never match with a smaller format digital are some of the optical idiosyncracies of large and ultra large formats (an 8x10 facial portrait is effectively a macro, with narrow DOF and all that), or the ability to dabble in interesting alternative processes (bromoil, chrysotype, van dyke, cyanotype, Pt/Pd, etc) although arguably you can do that with digital negatives. In any case, commercial users probably aren't generally concerned with Jim Galli-esque 8x10 portraiture and artistic fringe stuff like that, so it seems likely that the larger formats will remain (or become even more so) a fringe activity.
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