MFT as good (or better) as film medium format ?

[Solarflare]

The Online Photographer: When Will Micro 4/3 Equal Medium-Format Film? We Have the Definitive Answer

Our friend Ctein* has been a leading technical writer about photography for more than forty years, having published hundreds of articles in dozens of magazines.

He's also in a unique position to answer this question, because he photographed almost exclusively on low-ISO color negative film with a Pentax 67 (6x7 cm negatives) for 35 years, making prints up to 20x24 inches. He's also been a leading professional custom color printer for longer than most photographers have been shooting color, having been a master of the esoteric dye transfer process, the difficult and aristocratic (and expensive) color printing process available from the 1940s to the 1990s (it traces its roots back to a Technicolor movie process introduced in 1928, and was the go-to printing method for high-end advertising photography for decades). He still makes a significant part of his living doing custom inkjet printing on large and medium-size Epsons. He's been shooting Micro 4/3 for a number of years now (Olympus), and making prints from his files.

So how can there be a "definitive answer" to a "when will—?" type of question?

Because the answer, according to Ctein, is "about –6." That is, negative six. Six years ago, more or less.

"My '$19.95 Print Sale' spoke to that," he says. "Remember, that that wasn't a hero photograph, that was essentially a grab shot—a carefully-done grab shot, but a grab shot, nonetheless. While it made an excellent demo photograph for readers, it was not otherwise unusual in image quality from my typical work.

"That sale was four years ago and the equipment I was using was a year or two older than that (not a current-generation body at the time), so a half-dozen years in the past seems a safe number for the answer to your question.

... okay ?

I'm a bit baffled, because well I was under the impression that medium format lenses eat even Leica glas for breakfast.

 

[petrochemist]

As with so many of the format questions the answer is it depends.
I'm fairly sure any of my native MFT lenses will be better than any of my (cheap) medium format lenses.
Comparing modern digital with film there are many ways that digital wins whatever the film format.
There are of course over ways where larger sensor/film area makes a important difference, DOF being one of the oft quoted ones.
Many who still shoot film, will tell you it has characteristics you can't get via digital.

Pentax 6x7 lenses would be considerably better than my medium format kit, and in some circumstance will I'm sure be better than any of my MFT lenses. With the right subjects though the difference will be none existant, and I've not got the most expensive MFT kit!

 

[jaomul]

Anyone who uses different formats will likely say some formats excel at certain requirements. A mft camera is great when you want a good size vs quality output, such as but not only going on holiday etc.

Comparing vastly different formats probably makes little sense. It's fair enough to compare maybe m43, crop and full frame if someone is looking at a portable camera.

Specialized formats are different purpose tooling