What’s the point of medium format?
3 March 2016
Having lost a lot of ground to DSLRs in recent years, is there really a place
for medium-format cameras in photography?
Artwork
'Red Bull Pinhole Camera (And The Photograph Taken With It)' by Feyza
Kucukaltintas exhibited at the Red Bull Art of Can Turkey on December
21st, 2011
Photographer: Yigit Gunel / Red Bull Content Pool
Photographer: Yigit Gunel / Red Bull Content Pool
For the very best in digital image quality, photographers used to always turn to
medium-format cameras. These hefty machines offered many more pixels than
DSLRs and were engineered to deliver the sharpest possible images. While this is
still true, the performance gap between DSLRs and medium-format cameras has
narrowed considerably over the last few years.
DSLRs with resolutions between 35-50 megapixels are available for a fraction of
the price of medium-format. They are faster, lighter, better in low light and have a
larger selection of lenses and accessories. So does this signal the death of more
costly, less flexible larger-format cameras?
Not necessarily so. Medium format is fighting back by turning away from CCD
sensors, which are not as capable in low light, and embracing CMOS instead –
the same technology that’s used in DSLRs. This means cameras like Hasselblad’s
H5-50C can now offer great image quality at very high ISO settings, freeing them
from the studio and making it a useful tool for available light photography.
But the question still remains: why would you use such a camera when a Canon
EOS 5DS R can do the same job for less money? Many photographers continue to
use medium-format because of the look and feel that it gives their images.
This is something that’s very hard to define, and if you ask a Hasselblad, Mamiya
or PhaseOne owner to explain it you’ll hear lots of ill-defined, subjective phrases,
like ‘more immersive’ and ‘greater depth.’ But the medium-format look is real,
and originates from the more limited depth of field we see when using larger
formats.
It goes like this: since the sensor (or film) in a medium-format camera is much
larger than you’d find in a full-frame DSLR, lenses with an identical focal length
will give a wider angle of view when used on a medium-format than they will on
a DSLR. This means you’d need to stand closer with a medium-format camera
than you would with a DSLR to get the same image, and when you narrow the
distance between subject and camera, you also narrow depth of field.
Further more, there is a direct relationship between depth of field and sensor size:
for the same angle of view, the larger the sensor size the shallower the depth of
field.
For example, consider a full-frame DSLR and a 645 medium-format camera, each
fitted with a 50mm lens. To get the same shot on both of these set-ups we must
stand closer with the medium-format camera – which narrows the depth of field.
Creating shallow focus is important for portrait photographers, who want to let
their subjects stand out by making the background blurred, and this is hard to do
with short focal-length lenses. So when you see a portrait shot from a wide-angle
viewpoint, and the background is nicely blurred, this is an example of what
photographers are talking about when they sing the praises of medium format.
Despite being hard to describe, look and feel is an area where medium-format
can compete with DSLRs confidently, as the smaller format cannot pull off the
same tricks without breaking some of the laws of physics. It’s the same principle
that makes full-frame DSLRs more popular with professionals than cropped-sensor
DSLRs. And enables all DSLRs to create more characteristic images than compact
cameras and smartphones, which have tiny sensors and very short focal-length
lenses.
To go even further on the subject, large-format photography uses even longer
focal lengths to create images on 5x4-inch or 10x8-inch film.
Whilst medium format may have fierce competition in terms of image resolution, it
still has a place in the camera bags of photographers who want to shoot images
that stand out from the crowd and look a little bit different. It’s a technology that
is a very long way from the history books, and one that is making its way into
sports shooters more and more often.