As I mentioned in this blog many times in the past, I've always wanted to move into medium format digital photography. Cost is a huge factor but patiently waiting for a decade while keeping an eye on prices daily has helped me acquire a couple of medium format cameras recently. One camera is an old film camera while the other is a digital camera from 2021.
Twelve years ago, I upgraded into Sony's full frame format and I still love that system. Even compared to medium format, this Sony system has some significant advantages over medium format. My Sony camera is ideal for sports, wildlife and fast moving grandchildren so it gets a lot of use and I'll likely never put it to rest. The image quality of this full-frame system is great and it is a fast shooting camera.
Medium format photography, however, is noticeably better that full-frame in sheer image quality. With its significantly larger sensor, image quality takes a big jump upward. One of the image quality characteristics that is significantly better is its tonal gradation quality. For me, this buttery smooth tonal gradation quality is what I've always been attracted to. Using older legacy lenses from the film era helps make this tonal gradation more pronounced.
At this point, I already have a few medium format film cameras... some instant film cameras, one 75 year old folding 6x6 film camera that I restored myself, and a big Pentax 645 camera that I recently found for sale online in Japan. I have a few nice lenses for this Pentax 645 camera that I knew could be used on almost any digital medium format camera I might purchase in the future which was a plus for picking up this old film camera.
So, I've always been keeping an eye on the used camera market... almost daily... for more than a decade. I've been waiting to find a used medium format digital camera that would be affordable yet new enough to have top-level image quality. Fortunately for me, Fujifilm started producing medium format cameras about ten years ago. I say "fortunately" because I like Fuji cameras. Their more recent models are quite good and, perhaps more importantly for me, these medium format cameras can be found at budget prices. To make a long story short, I found a 2021 camera model at a price that is lower than my Sony camera! Purchasing on the used camera market also provides a big discount too. So I now have a digital medium format camera.
Here, below, I photographed my new Fuji GFX digital medium format camera (left) sitting next to the huge Pentax film medium format camera (right). The film camera is a bit taller but the really noticeably difference is it is significantly deeper and heavier than the Fuji GFX digital camera.
When by itself, this Fuji camera looks quite small and it really is rather small for a medium format camera. It doesn't actually feel like a medium format camera but the images it captures are most definitely medium format.
This camera is so small, in fact, that I almost feel as though this is a drawback. I really do want to feel like I'm shooting with a medium format camera with a huge sensor but this camera feels like an awful lot like my Sony and Panasonic cameras. What does make it bigger and heavier, however, is mounting a medium format lens on the body. Medium format lenses are quite large and heavy. Although feeling very high quality in the hand, this Fuji looks like a typical digital camera though...
Below, we have my medium format Fuji (at right) next to my micro four thirds Panasonic (left)... look at the difference in the size of the sensors! Yet, the camera bodies are quite similar in size and they even feel very much the same in the hand.
I really like this camera body. It has a nice top LCD panel that has three different screens. Each of these three different screens can be backlit in black, as shown, or in white. At the moment, I'm preferring the black background...
Here is a closer view of this top LCD. In hindsight, I should have captured the different available screens in photos too. One of the other arrangements shows two digital dials, which the other shows a large histogram. I'm still unsure which I prefer. I think I like this one that is pictured so I can keep a clean look in the viewfinder and on the back LCD.
The lens I happen to have on this camera is actually one of my old Konica lenses... a 40mm f/1.8 lens. Surprisingly, this little lens covers this giant sensor and works quite well on this camera.
My other Fuji digital camera (below left) is a compact rangefinder-styled camera that I picked up a few years ago. One would expect any medium format camera to be double the size of an old compact camera but that is not the case here. This photo also shows just how small this Fuji GFX camera body really is...
Here is a top view of these same two cameras... my new Fuji GFX medium format camera at top and my compact Fuji X30 at bottom... this view shows a more pronounced difference in the sizes. The beauty of having these two cameras is that the Fuji colors and menus are unique and they are almost identical between these two cameras.
Just like with my compact Fuji X30, this Fuji GFX can utilize a Fuji app on my cellphone as a remote shutter release...
The app can also be used to control the camera remotely which is really convenient and nice...
The remainder of the photos below are some photos I shot using this new Fuji GFX camera. It is rainy and extremely windy outside so I searched the house for some mundane subjects to photograph...
This photo is a sort of abstract minimalist photo. In this case, the subject is actually the side of our salt shaker...
My old original Sony a7 was nearby so I captured a close-up photo of the Sony emblem on the front top of the camera...
Here is another macro photo of the point of a pencil. I think I used my Pentax 645 150mm lens for this one. All of these old lenses I use on this new Fuji camera are old film-era manual focus lenses.
This photo, below, is a crop from the above photo. This crop is showing the image at 100%. This is some impressive resolution and clarity. I love the colors and the tonality too. The other impressive thing is that this stack of books was in a darkened part of our living room so this image is at a relatively high ISO sensitivity. I also used a slow shutter speed and the image stabilization in this camera did a good job at stabilizing the camera enough to capture a sharp image.
For these photos, I used my old Pentax 645 lenses... 45mm, 75mm, and 150mm. I also used my old Konica 40mm, my Pentacon 50mm, and my Canon FD 135mm. These are all old manual focus film lenses but the results are quite nice! At some point, I'd like to get a newer Fuji auto-focus lens designed specifically for this camera as well as a lens specifically for portraits. For portraits, I have a low cost Mitakon 65mm f/1.4 lens in mind.
I'm looking forward to using this camera more often.
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