The short of it here is does anyone have experience with medium format film? If so, what are your thoughts compared to modern digital (Canon R5)? Specifically, 6 x 4.5 and 6x9 formats.


The longer version: I am finally taking on digitizing family prints, positive slides, and negatives this winter. I am actually well underway and will post a thread after I have tried a few more things. But, in learning about digitizing film, most of the articles/videos are about current film shooters rather than people doing archiving. So I have been inundated with opinions about the greatness of film and the uniqueness of MF film, etc. Not that I was looking for it, I just wanted to get the most out of my digitizing efforts.

But, all this got me thinking and I was going to be near my local photo shop (Hunts) last night so I stopped by to see if they had 35 mm film. To my surprise, two center displays were dedicated to all sorts of film, not just 35 mm. Matter of fact, there may have been more 120 there than 35 mm. Based on all the videos, I had been under the impression that film was undergoing a bit of a renaissance but seeing this and discussing with the staff there confirmed it.

Complicating things a bit, but I've been looking for something different to play with this winter so I checked out their used gear and sure enough, two MF cameras that I would consider were there, a Fuji 6x9 with a fixed 90 mm f/3.5 lens and a Mamiya 645 with an interchangeable 80 mm f/1.9 lens.

Both reasonably priced. Not that I am consider a transition or anything, but if these were something special, maybe something I'd use a couple times a year.

However....I really am not sure film MF is special and that is why I am asking here if anyone has experienced it.

First, when talking MF, people talk about the detail, the perspective, and shallow DoF, etc. But I've played with this enough between APS-C and FF to know most of that really gets down to optics, math and physics, often referred to as equivalence in photography. Here is a good summary on equivalence, if interested, but what it gets down to is 90 mm f/3.5 on a 6x9 is really ~35 mm f/1.4 on FF and 80 mm f/1.9 on 645 is really 45 mm f/1.1 equivalent on FF. The ISO equivalence is still important, and the 6x9 ISO 100 would be ~ISO 33 on FF and the 645 ISO 100 would be ~ISO 64 on FF. In short, they should both be extremely clean. But ISO 100 on my R5 is already remarkably clean.

Next, this is a good video. What has me a bit is in most of the photographs, I preferred the digitized film image. In the initial tests they did not adjust for equivalence as they were comparing 645 to FF and you can see the bokeh difference, but at 10:40 you can start to see how film and digital diverge. They call it a dynamic range test, but really they are over and underexposing the image in camera and observing the results, which were pronounced:
  • Digital starts to blow out highlights as soon as the full well capacity is hit. It gets ugly. Film handles the overexposure extremely well.
  • Digital is working incredibly well in the underexposed images where film just starts to fall apart as it needs the light for the chemical reaction.


There is a difference to the look, shadows vs highlights, and it is easy to see how it could be based on the mechanism of each.

Right now I am tempted to buy one, try 1-2 rolls and if I do not like it, treat it as a rental and sell it or store it.

Thoughts? Anyone with experience between the Mamiya vs Fuji? My film experience was 35 mm.