Henry, for some reason you seem to want to dispute the information I provided. which is fine..but you seem to feel that I have been having a go at the A700, when I have directly been looking at the 5d compared to neg colour film.
I also note some interesting previous posts by yourself, on dp, regarding film and digital, some choice selelctions are:
1: "21mp beats 6x9 film"
2: "your 12mp DSLR is about equivalent to 4.5x6 film"
3: With regards negative film you suggested "The shadow areas are so muddy and noisy in a different and much worse way than scanned slides. I usually just have to adjust the black point so that the shadows turn almost black to get rid of the ugly look"
Not that I am picking on you here...
1: I would not want to suggest a FF 35mm DSLR would beat 6x9 film. I have not used a camera format that large, but I have seen prints from some, and pretty impressive would be a mild way of putting it.
2: This is the subject of much debate. The problems are numerous, which film? developing? optical or scanned? I see you once referenced to Ken Rockwell showing a D3 v a 35mm Retina and velvia..clearly the D3 not showing the details as well. Of course we could suggest the nikon has a worse lens, but I doubt that would hold up to much.
http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/2008-09-new.htm
So I have no doubts that compared to some film, 12mp isn't out resolving it. I have also been vocal and critical of the luminous landscape on this issue. As I have both 35mm and a 6mp APS-DSLR, I think my comments are valid. But as I have suggested, people who want monster prints don't shoot 35mm, they shoot LF. I note you have referenced to the LL before a few times, I assume you are not keen on my critical remarks. Well I have openly put these concerns to MR over at the LL, and the silence indicates much more to me than anything else. I think he is simply "missing the point", and feel his remarks are not indicative of real world conditions, and he is biased heavily to digital. But I have no personal beef with him, everyone can have a view.
3: We all now the 3 mediums are different, I don't even feel digital is "just like slide" either, there are differences. Neg film dislikes being starved of light, and is much happier with overexposure than underexposure, simply shooting in the same respect as slide, will yield more "grainy" results. Again this will vary from film to film. There is no reason shadow details should look muddy, if you expose for the shadows. But then you know this already..unless something went wrong when the film was developed.
Yes I would agree for colour fidelity slide is the place to go, over neg film. My points were based on dr and latitude.
Onto the other points..
"The difference in position doesn't look to be so far away, but I guess it is. All those big boulders disappeared between shots"
The boulders didn't go anywhere, I moved my position (to the right and up, hence less rocks) It's fairly obvious if you reference to clear points in the shot. Comments like this I don't really appreciate, as you are suggesting my integrity is compromised, and that the shots were taken at different times, weeks, months, years etc.
"Yep, that can happen when working with a little jpeg rather than the raw file"
Well I did shoot raw, for the obvious reason that shadow pulling on jpegs are not very effective, and their are limits. As I have said the 5d is pretty good with shadow depth, and it's possible to pull it up a fair bit. But, again it still has an effect on the tones and colours, and to my eye..by the time I have played about with it, I have a very "digital" looking image, which I don't really want. I would be the ist person to admit my pp skills are not at awesome levels, nor do I have the patience for extended processing of images, aka hours etc etc. Simply a case of workflow too, to scan the film takes not very long, and I prefer the results, this is subjective of course.
"Yeah, maybe there is. Unfortunately, none of your posted shots exhibit it"
I think they did. The ist shot is pretty challenging for digital, notable shadow areas at the base of the concrete/back of bronze face, with strong highlight areas blasting onto it. I found your shot, to not be anywhere near to that situation, and your shadows were far darker, nothing is clipped, no shadow areas are crushed in the film shot. No doubt in my mind the 5d would have struggled with that, again, forcing me to underexpose to attempt to hold the details.
The 2nd shot is a common problem for digital, where a large part of the frame is being exposed for with normal metering patterns, shadow area to the left in the enclosure...with the metering based on delivering an exposure for the midtones..it would quickly run out of highlight headroom, and possibly have some issues in shadow areas too. Again, the only solution would be to underexposed by some margin..and attempt to bring it up later on.
The bridge shot shows significantly more DR straight out of the film shot, without any attempt to adjust levels of curves etc. The digital requires some work to even get near the film one.
But the point that maybe you have missed, which I did say..is that for scenarios like this, it is easier to go about your business taking the photos, and not having to review/adjust exposures which IMO does not help concentration whilst out in the field working. And that if we had better DR, that these scenarios would be less common, and everyone would like that!
Are you suggesting you have never had to "re-take" a shot with the A700 in the scenarios I showed above? Are you suggesting that the A700 never clips highlights? Or that you have never missed a shot due to the exposure being not to your tastes?
"Okay, it is darn close to it though. Surprising since it is a film shot"
For a start the image is not clipped, and it's flat. The reason it is flat is, I scanned it like that. It lacks contrast, but that is down to my method of scanning..the ist shot lacks contrast too..but this is easily adjusted..
And I repeat again, this isnt the mother of all DR film, though the fuji appears to edge the kodak on these ISO 200 bog standard throw at you films.
There is an interesting article here...worth a read, yes a few years old, but highlights something about what I have said:
http://www.photojournalistas.com/Storie ... rog01.html
I would just take one line to show how much I agree with it.
"Each format still has strengths that the other one doesn’t have"