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So a friend of mine lent me his Mamiya ZD with 80/2.8 lens. It arrived yesterday and I will perform a first quick test in my studio tomorrow against my A900 at around 50 mm. I will then try to evaluate the difference in image quality. Please bear with me until I have a chance to test it on a real person.

So, here is my first "box" shot. And it´s a killer ... all images resized to 1000 pix

Here is the whole frame, a crop from a still life I photographed today:


A crop from the Mamiya:


A crop from the A900:


I tried to match saturation (Mamiya is much less saturated). The moiré on the printed label is a bummer!
I wanted to test the two cameras at their base iso, which was 50 on the Mamiya and 200 on the A900.
Aperture is different, though, I will have to watch that next time.

Here are two portraits, again aperture on the mamiya is wider, but I think one gets the picture:

Images are to large to embed:
http://www.bloomoose.de/images/patrick_sony.jpg
http://www.bloomoose.de/images/patrick_mamiya.jpg

I don´t see much of an increase in dynamic range from the bigger sensor. Overall, the Sony is the better camera, better resolution and colors.

Hello Pam. The A900 crop looks crispier with nicer colours than the Mamiya to my eyes.
Interesting test, topic to transfer to our "lens and camera reviews by our members" section.. OK for you?

That would mean, when it comes to image quality, the Sony does a better job than the Mamiya! The Sony A77 seems to have a better quality than the A900, so quality wise there seems to be no reason to buy one of these cameras.
But there is one thing we should not forget: the Mamiya was announced at Photokina 2004, that is almost 8 years ago!

This contradicts the urban legend ( as far as I am concerned) that medium format is by definition so much better than 35mm. There are some religious discussions on other forums about the D800, some saying it is the death of medium format, others saying that a 35mm 36MP camera will NEVER be able to compete with that 'special' look of medium format...
Any comment about that ?

Guy Van Hooveld wrote:This contradicts the urban legend ( as far as I am concerned) that medium format is by definition so much better than 35mm. There are some religious discussions on other forums about the D800, some saying it is the death of medium format, others saying that a 35mm 36MP camera will NEVER be able to compete with that 'special' look of medium format...
Any comment about that ?

Hi Guy,

I think that it's also dependent on the age of the sensor - when the Canon 1Ds3 came out it was the death of MF too, no one would say that looking at the output of both today, they've now jumped to 80mpix, have live view, etc. I think what's really interesting on the Nikon D800E is the lack of (or lesser) AA filter, that should even things up a bit but there are advantages to a larger sensor - more light will be recorded overall for the same scene so dynamic range *Should* be better and so should noise control - although that only seems to be true at base iso.

The D800 will be another nail to MF´s coffin, that´s what I expect. The file quality comes very close ...
I´m looking forward to side-by-side comparisons with the Pentax 645, I don´t think there will be any visible difference.

As for me, I´m waiting a few months to see what Sony will offer in the SLT-FX department. Maybe interesting for my studio work.