Medium Format Digital - Where Does It Fit?
/
Most every committed photographer I speak to is on a quest for less weight and smaller systems, so why would such a person consider higher cost, larger size and the greater weight involved in adding medium format digital to his or her work kit?
There are limited choices in platforms, Hasselblad, PhaseOne and Fujifilm are the main players. Only the Fujifilm line looks and feels like a traditional DSLR or Mirrorless and thus transition is easy for folks coming from the 35mm style world.
I want to thank the fine people at Fujifilm Canada for loaning me a Fujifilm GFX 100 ii for this review, unfortunately it got called back early for another project that the company required so I did not have near enough time to spend with it to deliver what I had hoped to do. So what you get is a rather abbreviated version.
I was very familiar with the original GFX 50s. I think the latest model is lighter and smaller, certainly easier to wield hand held. You see I want to see how it would work as a daily driver with emphasis on close up and had lenses been available (they were not) on recreational sports. Consequently my use was somewhat limited by time, but this is what I learned.
Why Medium Format At All
We all know that chasing megapixels for megapixel count itself is to be blunt, pretty darn stupid. The useful question is the number of megapixels in a sensor frame which then defines the surface area of the pixel itself.
The science on this is simple. The larger the surface area, the better the efficiency of light gathering. Period. That’s it. It is one of the reasons why lower megapixel count sensors do so much better in low light at high ISOs. It’s why colour definition is better with larger pixels than smaller ones.
It also belays the illusion that more pixels allows for more cropping which would make for higher resolution and thus “better” images. Higher resolution? Yes! Better images, show me the scientific proof. I will keep waiting as I have for years.
What medium format brings is not in and of itself more pixels, instead it brings more pixels on a much larger surface area, and that means larger pixel surface area, and that means better images. A simple statement of fact, anathema to most influencers and internet pundits who hate facts getting in the way of their statements.
Math Exercise
If we consider the surface area alone, a full frame digital sensor should cover an area of 36mm x 24mm. It commonly actually does not, but we will give it the benefit of the doubt. This is an area of 864 square millimeters and into this the maker places however many pixels required to deliver the required megapixel count because buyers still believe that more megapixels means better images. We know that this is fundamentally horseshit, but never let reality get in the way of marketing.
The a surface area of of the GFX 100 ii is 1441 square millimeters. That means the there is over 1.7 times the space available in which to place pixels. If we dive into sensor math, even with higher megapixel counts we find that we have much larger pixel surface areas in medium format. We also find that the users of medium format are less consumed by a fictitious megapixel chase and are more interested in final image quality. Now this sensor size is not as large as a traditional medium format camera which at its smallest is 6cm x 4.5cm so you need to take that into consideration.
If You Don’t Print - Stop Here
Allow me to be clear. If you take pictures to share on low res computer displays (all consumer displays are very low res - fact) or on smartphones or tablets (medium res with tiny screens - fact) You are not the customer for medium format. Just as you cannot see the quality actually delivered by your current mirrorless or DSLR, you will NEVER see the quality of a medium format digital negative on one of these displays. The ONLY way you will see this quality is on a large professionally made print, that did not result from some massively compressed and lossy JPEG. Medium format camera makers are not happy when I share this fact, but they have worked really hard to make amazing photographic systems and if the value is not seen by the misinformed, or disinformed, they lose in the long run.
Still Here?
The GFX 100 ii is the best return on investment in digital medium format in my personal opinion. Having been a Hasselblad owner and user for decades, I know that they make super glass. But I have also been a photographer and videographer for decades and I know for a fact that Fujinon lenses are superb. Better than your eye can resolve.
The GFX 100 ii is handholdable. Not like a Fujifilm T series or an Olympus OM-1 but not much more than my fully equipped Canon R5, The lenses are larger and bulkier because they have to properly cover 3x the sensor area. That too is basic math.
I find the camera easy to use, with as good a menu system has I have seen and better than many. The documentation is decent, but as the only copy I had was online, needs more work to make it easy to find topics, and unlike more common cameras, owners might actually read the manual.
I was a bit disappointed that the default charging method as delivered is with the battery in the camera using the supplied USB-C type charger. There may be an optional external charger. I find charging in camera to be a pain in the butt.
There are two card slots, CF-Express B and SDXC. The SDXC slot is fine for stills but the internal bus to it is expectedly slower, and you deal with that. If you want faster writes, particularly if you want to use the 8K RAW video capability, you will want to use the CF-Express B slot with exclusivity. It has excellent performance. I did find that finding how to manually switch slots for use to be buried in the menu systems and I would encourage Fujifilm in firmware updates to make this MUCH easier. I have great respect for the company in their firmware practice as they lead the market in adding value in addition to fixes with each upgrade. This is not solely my opinion.
I was also interested to see that I could use a USB-C based SSD type storage system for the camera, which honestly is what you need to do for longer form video as 8K and even full res 4K eats storage like nothing you have ever seen before. If I was going to use this camera for serious video I would look for a cage to fit the camera with an appropriate set of mount points for storage and connection of video tools, like a mount bracket for an SSD as I have on my Blackmagic 6K Cinema Camera.
I had two lenses for my short test, an 80/1.7 prime and a 120/4 macro. I have used the macro before and knew it to be a superb lens. What I found was higher performance in the GFX 100 ii in image capture and storage than on my prior experience with the GFX 50. Again, image quality better than what the human eye can see on any computer display or television screen.
AF Performance
Medium format cameras have been regularly attacked for slow AF, particularly in continuous focus modes, making them less acceptable for sports and wildlife. While I did not get Fujifilm’s longest lens with the unit, I was able to test using the macro on cherry blossoms in a breeze. I find them not unlike tracking kids on a soccer field as their movements are more random than birds or aircraft in flight and definitely more like wasps on meth than a professional. athlete. I expected very little and was very pleasantly surprised. As I always do, I use a single focus point with back button focus and follow by eye. Harder perhaps than using Zones, but it is very consistent for me, and I always know EXACTLY which focus point the camera is using. It’s even more challenging because of limited depth of field in the movement space, so success is testament to very fine tracking.
High Speed Shooting
The camera is rated at 8fps and 5.3fps with no viewfinder blackout. I can confirm that this is functional although even with sports I rarely go more than four frames in burst mode. Spray and pray is the lazy picture takers outlet and that’s not me. There is a burst mode which provides EVF continuity at 120 fps, although given the maximum video frame rate is 59.94i in 4K, I personally did not find value in this.
Video
Video is up to 8K Cinema RAW capability. As I own nothing capable of actually displaying 8K video, shooting it made no sense at all. The 4K video is excellent so long as your editor can handle Fujifilm RAW video. Mine does and it looks great. There was no tearing even on moving subjects so I call this success. The video is as good as one is good to find in a larger sensor still camera. If you want better video, then you would be in the video business and be using a proper video cinema camera that is built to take focus pullers, and big battery packs, rail kits and all the rest.
Computational Photography Nonsense
Fujifilm has to offer computational photography. They would be eviscerated in the photo media if they did not. Fortunately when shooting in uncompressed true RAW, most of this digital diarrhea is avoided. The marketing offers the buyer a post processing free existence which would be anathema to any actual professional photographer, but might encourage purchase by social media amateurs and that sells gear, however anachronistic it may be. You don’t see that kind of BS from Hasselblad and certainly not from Phase One.
Fujifilm is well know and well respected for delivering some of the best film simulations in the industry based unsurprisingly on their long and successful film deliverables. The list is impressive, but I must be honest in that I did not use any of them. I only used the camera in pure RAW mode and leveraged none of the camera’s built in computational processing. Other users may choose to do so, and will likely find highly accurate representations of Fuji film stocks.
As you can tell from the header, I avoid computational photography at all times not only colour manipulation but pixel shifting and all the rest. I think that these tools are of enormous value to those with smartphones and other low res, questionable lens tools but if I need that sort of thing in a camera of this investment level, I am not interested. No slag against Fujifilm, but I eschew that kind of non-reversable manipulation of data on every platform. I want high native resolution for the purpose of fine art printing. Social media from my perspective is a pox on society so I am the wrong person to advocate for it.
Results
Due to limited time, I was unable to get out and truly give the camera a hard run. The images that I got were what I expected, better colour depth, greater sharpness and less noise. Adobe Lightroom Classic was able to read the RAW files without issue and I was pleased to see no evidence of any kind of post image manipulation in the converted RAWs. I’m not happy with the results but that is on me, not the camera. The video is quite good, given that I shot only in 4K as I have no way to assess the quality of 8K video. I cannot say that I found the continuous focus exemplary in terms of speed, but again my test time was limited. With proper planning and the right subjects, I suspect that my results would have been much better. I did find a minor tendency to under-expose naturally but this was addressed by exposing to the right as I always do, however if this were my camera I would definitely have the metering system checked, or check it myself in a highly controlled environment.
I am a substantial user of flash and again, my own time limitations prevented me from doing any serious testing in this regard.
The CAD MAP for the body alone is $10,124.99 considerably less expensive than a similar Hasselblad or Phase One. The 120/4 macro lens has a CAD MAP of $2,499 which is a bargain for a lens of this quality. The 80/1.7 has a CAD MAP of just under $3,000 although this lens amongst other Fujifilm GF lenses is on sale at time of writing for $2,425 which is more reasonable for what is basically a 50mm full frame angle of view prime.
Given my limited time, I was unable to prove my hypothesis that one could shoot this camera handheld for most everything. My admittedly crappy results (all on me) says that so far, my theorem is invalid. I have to be fair though that my time was limited and was also impacted by a lung infection on my part which definitely impacted my abilities. Were I able to get another longer time with the camera I would mount an Arch plate to it and see what side by side value gain I would get in some studio static scenarios, and then go find some amateur sports to work on, if an appropriate lens was available.
Wrapping Up
If you are seriously committed to your photography and are seeking a step up in colour fidelity, and large scale printability, a medium format sensor will help you get there. I would recommend getting the largest sensor you can afford. Cost in this space is always going to be greater than in the 35mm or M4/3 space as is weight and use cases. When I was doing a lot more studio work, medium format was not a question, it was a requirement. I do less of that now as demands have changed. For the dollar investment, I think that the Fujifilm GFX 100 ii is a good choice, while the GFX 50 ii will cost quite a but less for the body for the same sensor area, but lower pixel count..
Please become a member on Patreon to help support this channel. A big thanks to all the existing Patreon members! Send in comments or questions, I read and respond to all. If you shop with B&H Photo Video, please use the link on the main page as it pays me a small commission and does not cost you anything to do so. Thanks again and we will see each other again soon.
