I recently stumbled into a site where a person was comparing the Epson 4990 scanned images to the same image made with, I believe, a Nikon D100. They had taken a tiny matching section from each to show how much better the scanned 4x5 negative was than the digital taken with the Nikon.

I can't remember where I found it, I failed to bookmark it, but I am wondering if anyone here might know where it is. It was very revealing.