I am so damn happy with my Rolleicord medium format camera, that I decided to run an informal test between it and one of my digital SLRs (Canon 350D). The photo I pulled up for the test is very similar to one I shot with the Rollei last week, so will be a good test. Details of the cameras are:
Canon 350D, 8MP, shot in RAW, 17-85mm lens, with the saturation cranked up (as I used to like it), sharpened as much as possible, probably over-sharpened, but it's too late now :)
Rolleicord III, 75mm Schneider-Kreutznach Xenar taking lens, Kodak Portra 160VC medium format film, 6x6 frame scanned at 3200dpi on an Epson Perfection 4490 flatbed scanner as a JPG, lightly sharpened, saturation increased to match the digital. A drum or Imacon would pull far more information out while reducing the grain substantially, as my scanner is really only producing noise, it's not really getting down to the grain like the photo would suggest.
I've matched the zooms as close as possible, bearing in mind the Canon photo is at 100% magnification and the Rollei image is at about 30% due to it's massive dimensions, and taken a screenshot. You will need to look at the full size to appreciate just how utterly mind blowingly sharp the Xenar lens is on the Rollei!!! Bear in mind my scanner is pretty average compared to an Imacon, and from all accounts a medium format drum scan is the equivalent of over 100 megapixels, and don't get me started on 4"x5" or 8"x10" - imagine that, a negative the size of a piece of A4 paper :-)
I also see that besides being far far sharper, it also has much more natural colours, esp. the red, on the digital it's sort of a yucky orange-red.
Here is the screengrab of the comparison of the two images.
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