Film Medium Format Cameras

[Jonathan Huyer]

Sounds like fun! I've never played with a MF camera of any type, but I would be especially intrigued if it happened to come with a tilt-shift lens. Then you could do some incredible landscapes, with great detail in the foreground and background. Kind of a modern-day Ansel Adams, with his old bellows style camera.

[Kayaker72]

Sounds like fun! I've never played with a MF camera of any type, but I would be especially intrigued if it happened to come with a tilt-shift lens. Then you could do some incredible landscapes, with great detail in the foreground and background. Kind of a modern-day Ansel Adams, with his old bellows style camera.

You got there a lot faster than I did!

This is pretty close to where I think I am ending up. The two cameras I looked at would not have the tilt shift ability. Also, at least this photographer, using the much larger 4x5 format, concluded this would not be about gain in resolution compared to the 61 MP of the Sony A7R4 (which I consider the R5 comparable in terms of resolution). It was pointed out in the comments that he limited 4x5 resolution with his scan size...and his basic response was he thought comparing 10 ft tall print equivalents was enough resolution.

Equivalent lenses exist for FF for most of the two MF lenses I was considering as well as several others I ran the calculations on.

But, the tilt shift feature? Check out these portraits. While I like the first set more, I also came across this video that did not use tilt shift, but as you move to the 4x5 format, you do get lenses where there are no FF equivalent. And look at that difference. That was a 180 f/2.9 which has a FF equivalence of ~50 mm f/0.8. As that is a 180 f/2.9 lens, a FF 200 f/2 lens would give the same look (or better), but you would be 4x further back with different perspective regarding subject to background (200 mm perspective vs 50 mm perspective).

So, I've moved off the Fuji 6x9, I am not sure it does anything other than FILM, compared to what I have, also scrolling through images on Flickr was not inspiring. I might pick up the Mamiya 645, but it would be more for the novelty and to get used to film (again), and I could easily turn around sell it, and get back most to all my investment. But, what has my attention right now is smaller Large Format cameras (4x5 or 5x7, inches, not the cm measurements of MF). Those provide for tilt shift and lenses that have no FF equivalent. Interesting.

But, make no mistake, part of this exercise has me appreciating how good we have it with modern FF cameras.