[bbatha]

Depends on how you define quality. While medium and large format photography are extremely high resolution that’s not the only factor. Space age lenses were significantly lower resolution than the film. Modern mirrorless lenses are starting to come close to being able to out resolve film but still aren’t there. Meaning that you get more functional resolution out of modern digital. Digital also beats the pants off film for dynamic range and low light. That said the noise (grain) and dynamic range fall off in film are more pleasing than digital to most eyes. So it’s not all about technical specs.

[thw_9a83c]

> Digital also beats the pants off film for dynamic range and low light.

While this is true now, it took a surprisingly long time to get there. The dynamic range of professional medium format negative films is still respectable. Perhaps not so much in a low light, but it's very immune to overexposure.

Also, you can buy a cheap medium-format camera in a good condition and experience that "huge sensor" effect, but unfortunately there are no inexpensive 6x6 digital cameras.

[buildbot]

In fact there is basically only one digital back ever made at that size, the dicomed bigshot.

[bhickey]

> Space age lenses were significantly lower resolution than the film.

Can you say a little more about this? Modern lenses boast about 7-elements or aspherics, but does that actually matter in prime lenses? You can get an achromat with two lenses and an apochromat with three. There have definitely been some advances in glass since the space program, like fluorite versus BK7, but I'm wholly in the dark on the nuances.

[bayindirh]

I find modern primes much sharper than their older counterparts not because of the elements or the optical design, but from the glass directly.

Sony's "run of the mill" F2/28 can take stunning pictures, for example. F1.8/55ZA is still from another world, but that thing is made to be sharp from the get go.

The same thing is also happening in corrective glasses too. My eye numbers are not changing, but the lenses I get are much higher resolution then the set I replace, every time. So that I forget that I'm wearing corrective glasses.

[actionfromafar]

The lenses also have to be better to compensate for the smaller sensors. All lens defects get more "magnified" the smaller the sensor is. So a straight comparison isn't fair unless the sensor is the same size as the film was.

[bbatha]

I wrote a longer post a few months ago.[1] The tl;dr is a) computer aided design and manufacturing b) aspherical elements c) fluorite glass d) retro focus wide angle designs and e) improved coatings. Mirrorless lenses also beat slr lenses because they are much closer to the film plane — of course rangefinders and other classic designs never had this problem to begin with. 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42962652

Edit: this is just for prosumer style cameras. If you look at phone sized optics that’s a whole other ballgame.