A while ago I was lucky enough to take a few photos with a Fujifilm GFX 50S II, a medium format camera. It’s quite a bit bigger than my everyday camera, in physical size and file size.
The file size did surprise me initially, it was set to save a double of each photo, the compressed .JPG and the raw .RAF. I took 79 photos, which made 158 files, and they took up 9.46GB of space. The .JPGs were between 18.5MB and 19MB, and the .RAFs are 103MB. But obviously, a medium format camera takes larger images, which therefore means larger file sizes. So if I was to consider this camera I would also need a few new external hard drives too.
But look at the detail!
a.k.a. How hard is it to take a photo of a cat?
Above is a photo of my favourite companion Moccie (RIP). It took me a while to get a photo of him, typical cat style he did not stop moving and kept headbutting the lens. I eventually got this response from him, and a fairly standard photo.
It’s hard to see the detail of what the camera takes in this photo though. So let’s look at what it actually takes.
I don’t know if/how Medium compresses images, but this is his eye saved from Photoshop at 100%: 1000px wide, 300dpi and maximum quality. The detail is a lot crisper than I normally get.
It also works with lovely softer photos like the tulip below.
All of these photos were taken with the kit lens it comes with, a GF 35–70mm.
The other thing that surprised me was the sharpness of each photo. When you press the shutter button it sounds really slow and clunky, and you think ‘oh yeah, that’s going to be blurry’, especially when your subject is constantly moving. But the image that comes out was always nice and crisp. After a while I was getting a bit jealous of the sharpness that it achieved over what I’d been used to with my other cameras.
One day I would love to try it with a zoom lens and see how well it does bird photography.
My love for the GFX 50S II might be a bit premature though, as this is the first medium format camera I’ve ever used, and at roughly $5k (AUD) for one, plus extra for any lenses, I’d definitely try out a few more before I committed to purchasing one.