Digital Medium Format Photography

The Fuji GFX50 has become a workhorse for me. The body and lenses are well-sealed. I love some of the features such as focus stacking and long exposures that extend up to an hour without an intervalometer, but what matters most is the image quality. Longer exposures can be shockingly good in terms of low noise, dynamic range, and color. The resolution is only a little better than my Sony A7RII but the impact is greater.I can only imagine what the GFX 100 will deliver.

Some people complain that the Fujis are expensive but that argument doesn’t fly. The GFX 100 delivers 102 Megapixels with groundbreaking feature- IBIS, Phase Detection autofocus, 16bit color depth- at a cost of $10,000. For that money nothing else comes close. My first digital SLR was the Canon 1DS, an 11 megapixel behemoth that sold for an eye-watering $8000 in 2002, the equivalent of $11,000 after inflation. My recent iPhone shots look better.

Consider for a moment the flexibility of the new GFX 100. At moments when you don’t have time to switch lenses- and given that Fuji offers only one zoom, that will happen- you can crop down to Sony A7RII levels,i.e. by 58%, with 16 bit color instead of Sony’s 14 bit files. This affords greater room work while editing without degrading the image, something unavailable for any current full frame camera.

Like other medium format cameras, the Fujis fail to match the rapid fire autofocus speeds of the best full frame DSLRs, but in their realm- landscapes, portraits, and even studio, nothing touches them until you enter Phase One land at a major premium.

Hasselblad apparently has quietly discontinued its lightweight medium format body, the X1D, as noted on the B&H site. There is no notice on the Hasselblad site I can see. Perhaps they will resurrect it with improvements in the future.

The Temple of the Sun in Capitol Reef National Park, UT, a medium format panorama.

Three shot panorama of Monument Valley shot with the quasi Medium Format Fuji GFX 50S.

The medium format world is becoming more crowded, not what I expected. Mamiya entered the fray with the 645 DF+ at significantly lower prices than Phase One or Hasselblad, and now Pentax 645z with a Sony 51 MP back for just $7000. Ming Thein evaluated the Pentax's performance in several posts and found it exemplary, suggesting that it had the best sensor of the lot. Still, he decided on the new Hasselblad for it's superior lens selection, accessories, and support, which you can find in later posts.

https://blog.mingthein.com/2014/12/10/pentax-645z-six-months/

Long term experiences: the Pentax 645Z, six months in

Mark Dubovoy talks about conceptual planning in the latest post in Photoaesthetics. Some of the images were shot with a Leica S, requiring a close approach.. http://photoaesthetics.com/dont-just-get-picture/

Don't "Just Get The Picture!" - Photo Aesthetics Don't just get the picture. Determine the look and feel of your images, develop a style and tell a story!