Thanks for these interesting tests. It's a bit cruel to the CCDs at it shows the CMOS where in the aspects its most superior. Strong backlit scenes and long exposures are still quite narrow use cases for the typical MF photographer, but indeed it's very relevant for us landscape photographers.
Before getting too excited about Sony sensor shadow push capabilities I think one should consider tonality. Even if noise is low I think it looks like colors are dull, kind of brownish or otherwise going towards monochromatic, those pushed areas look like how old CMOS cameras rendered color, ie not that good. My guess is that there's too little signal (photons) captured to get good color. So what you still need is higher full well capacity, or non-linear response (which is coming by the way) so we can shoot with longer exposure times and capture more photons in the dark areas.
Meanwhile it can still be a good idea to use grad filters, to get better tonality in those shadows.
Before getting too excited about Sony sensor shadow push capabilities I think one should consider tonality. Even if noise is low I think it looks like colors are dull, kind of brownish or otherwise going towards monochromatic, those pushed areas look like how old CMOS cameras rendered color, ie not that good. My guess is that there's too little signal (photons) captured to get good color. So what you still need is higher full well capacity, or non-linear response (which is coming by the way) so we can shoot with longer exposure times and capture more photons in the dark areas.
Meanwhile it can still be a good idea to use grad filters, to get better tonality in those shadows.