Does Medium Format Suck?

Medium Format vs APS-C

Fujifilm X-H2S vs GFX 50S Review

If you are wondering how medium format compares to APS-C, this video is for you.

I put the Fujifilm GFX 50S and the Fujifilm X-H2S to the test in various situations and see how they differ in image quality, autofocus, dynamic range, low light, and video features.

The GFX 50S has a larger sensor and higher resolution than the X-H2S, but is it worth the extra cost and size?

Watch the listen to this episode and watch the video to find out which camera gives you more control over your photography!

If you are wondering how medium format compares to APS-C, this video is for you.

Video Transcript

Welcome to Photographer's Coffee Morning. today we're doing incident a little bit different, so normally I'd have a guest here or somebody interviewing me or somebody interviewing another person or a Roundtable discussion. But today we've got none of that. We had some technical difficulties and our normal guest that would've appeared this week. We had some like connection problems and things didn't work out. So we've rearranged that interview for another time in the month. but for this week, I wanted to spend a little bit of time talking to you guys about. Something that's been touched on the podcast quite a lot, and that is medium format.

So for those of you that are listening in and not looking on YouTube, there are gonna be segments of this video that are gonna be more expanded on YouTube because. Basically, if you're gonna be talking about image quality, it's a lot easier to see the difference than it is to just imagine it in your brain.

While I'm talking, we've got my screen in front of me. We're gonna be talking together about medium format and about why I have decided that this is something that's important for my work. Medium format has been something that's been around. Thought a very long time before the advent of digital cameras, most photographers would maintain two kits.

There would be one small format kit for fast action and lower resolution, and there would be medium format, which was there to capture things like portraits, higher resolution images, and essentially anything that required smoother tonal gradation. When we transitioned to digital, producing a chip large enough to be equivalent to medium format was nearly impossible.

The very earliest digital cameras were either a small, super35 or APS-C sensor, or a larger full frame sensor that which is the same size as 35mm. However, if you were used to working as a film photographer before this, both of those sensor sizes might have seemed small. A lot of professionals prioritized medium format as their primary capture method, and they'd be using formats like 645, 6:7, and 6:6.

All of these formats had significantly more resolution. 35mm, like even 645, was nearly double the capture size. Of the 35mm frame, and as a result film, which kind of derives its resolution from the amount of grain in there. So a really fine grain film would have a high resolution, if you like.

Really fine grains, the grains make up the detail, which means you get more resolution. A larger piece of that film means that you're capturing more information in the same frame. So back in the day, if you wanted high resolution, you had to make a choice. Do you want to use a larger negative and use it more film and get more resolution, or do you want to use a smaller negative and save money, save size those time and work on smaller systems that would've been more nimble and easier to use with fewer technical constraints?

Fast forward to digital. The vast majority of photographers are shooting on what we would consider to be a full frame camera. This is the same as a 35mm negative on film, which is considered to be a smaller format for me. I stop shooting film for professional work. Probably around about six or seven years ago.

And the reason I did that is I was struggling to get the quality that I wanted from film. And as a result, we transition to digital cameras. We start getting the results that we want from these digital formats, and we try and learn to make our colors look the way that we like. And now I really do feel like I'm in a place where when I produce my work, I know what I'm gonna be getting.

I love the colors that we produce, but there is still something that I feel is missing. There's a human element that's lost when we used these modern cameras with auto focus and a million megapixels, and I kind of wanted to make a shift to something a little bit more traditional. So right now I'm shooting a good portion of my work on this camera.

This is a Fujifilm, GFX 50s, and the lens on it is a Voigtlander, 58mm 1.4. This combination is. Frankly, exactly what I want. The camera's 50 megapixels, and this is the first medium format camera that Fuji produced. And as a result, it's actually pretty affordable now. It's been a number of years since this was released, and I think I paid around about a thousand pounds for this camera body. And honestly, I couldn't be happier.

Now when you compare it to Fuji's current medium format offerings, this camera has terrible auto focus. It is not particularly good at video, and it's very heavy. It's very big, and compared to more modern options, the viewfinder does not feel quite as high quality. But frankly for what I want this camera for, which is manual focus, a more organic feel, none of those things particularly matter to me.

Now, with all that said, I wanna show you some examples of images that were taken on this camera, and really I want to do that because I want you to understand what I'm seeing in it. So if we turn to the computer now, we'll take a look together at some of the images that were taken with this camera. Now this project is something I've been working on for a little while, with a local artist called Dave Partington.

And the idea is I'm trying to show people's craft. I'm gonna go into their spaces and show them making things that matter, really putting the heart and soul into the things that they produce. And in Dave's case, he's a potter. So what I want you to look at is the kind of quality of these images. All of these were manual focused.

This lens is the equivalent of a 43mm f1. So everything that you're seeing I focused by hand. And if you look through, you realize after a while that although most of these are in focus at some stage, none of them are critically. And this is something I actually wanted. I don't want an image to be a hundred percent exactly how reality was.

I want there to be some kind of play in the image. So when I'm looking through these photographs, what I'm aiming for is the mood that we had when we were taking the images. If you look at the potter's wheel here, for example, you can see there's some motion blur going on to kinda really accentuate the movement of this wheel.

You can see that his hands here aren't really sharp cuz the focal point was on an area where of a loud motion blur in to obscure some of those details. As we go through these images, you should see a very characterful image. You should see something that really highlights the mood from the scene and not so much the reality of what was going on in front of.

In many cases there isn't a solid point of focus, but I've kept the image largely because I feel like it still captures the mood of the overall shoot. It would be easy to look at an image like this, for example, and think this is a failure. We haven't really got anything in focus. if we look at the potter's wheel, there is nothing here that's critically sharp.

The background blur is distracting. You can see there are these hard lines in the background blur, but to me there is something incredible. About the way this image looks.

In my head. When I saw this scene, this is the way it felt to me. And for the first time in a long time, I'm starting to get images that feel the way that I felt when I was taking the photograph.

I feel like this is an underrated element when we're all producing our work. We can decide what's important to us, we can choose what we're gonna prioritize. You can prioritize sharpness and making something that's clinically perfect and basically has everything in focus and shows exactly the scene as it was when you took it or you can do something that captures the emotion, the mood of the scene.

Now I want you to note this is a medium format camera, but if you look at it, there are some issues with the actual image. if you see the top left here, there's a lot of noise. And you might be asking why isn't the point of having a large negative, like a better quality and medium format comes with its own trade offs?

And the Fuji film gfx is one of the most flexible medium format centers out there, but it still has limits. This entire scene was lit by a one-by-one window, tiny window, and no internal lights. So this image was taken at ISO 6,400, and then it was pushed in post production by a roundabout, three stops.

the other thing is because the lens on this camera was designed for a smaller format, and it just happens to cover the larger sensor. What you're seeing in the very extreme corners is the vignette correction. So you can see it's really colorful on the top left and it fades down to being a more neutral color tone where that vignette ends. Looking at this in 5k on this monitor in front of me, this is obnoxious and I don't really like it, so I probably would not deliver a print this image, but there's still something about the image quality, the actual non-technical elements that I really like.

So as we move on to the next photograph, I want you to bear in mind those limitations. I want you to bear in mind the situation we were in. very low light, very considered, very slow. This is pretty much the worst possible situation. I could put this camera in, but I really want you to get a feel for how these images look, for how this lens renders and for the kind of feeling that you get when you're looking at these photographs.

The way that medium format kind of evokes mood is something that's pretty unique as far as I'm concerned, and it's not something I've been able to find in any 35mm camera before moving over to Fuji. The Canon 50mm 1.2 was a cornerstone of my style, and even that lens didn't capture this kind of, Involved characterful emotive feel that we're getting from this combination of this very specific, very special lens and that really large medium format sensor.

These might not be to everybody's taste, and to be frank, I'm not expect them to be, but this work is, this is what I wanted to produce for as long as I can remember. I wanted to make something that shows. These artists in their environment, and you might have noticed the change here. This is my Fujifilm, X-H2s.

This is one of the only shots that I took on that camera was as I was leaving, but I wanted to get some images of Dave in his studio with a wider angle, and I don't currently have a wide angle option for the gfx. But look at this image, it's still beautiful. And you can see at the top left here this window was the only thing that had lit Any scene that we've looked at so far, and you can see how tight a space we're working in, you can see the reality of the situation that we're in, and then we're back to the gfx.

And you can see how it has a personality and a character.

It's a tool that feels very much like. It has something to say, it has something to add, and it makes you look at your scene in a different way. And frankly, that can be a good and a bad thing if you don't want to have to fight with your camera. If you don't want to be in a situation where you need to select focus and make compromises and know the limitations of your camera, this is probably not for you.

There are definitely options out there that feel like absolute workhorses that will demand nothing of you if you're not sure what to look at. If you're looking for something that does. You can absolutely check out options like, I don't know, the Canon R5, which I had previous to this, which is basically the most reliable camera I've ever seen.

But it doesn't produce colors quite like this. Skin tones aren't quite as nice as we see here, and frankly, I want the fight.

I've been a photographer for 12 years and I'm getting to the stage now. If you give me a perfect tool, I'll give you a perfect result, and that isn't interesting to me. So when I'm choosing to make work for myself, these are the tools that I'm selecting, the ones where I can make mistakes. Interesting mistakes! And I want this for you too.

So this is the gfx. This is what it looks like in a vacuum. This is the look that I want out of this camera. But what I wanted to do as well was take a few moments to talk about the differences between this. And what most people would consider to be a small format sensor.

So the images we're about to look at on screen, and I'm about to describe for you are from the Fujifilm, X-H2s, which is a very modern stacked sensor, but small sensor. It's an APS-C and the gfx, which is a medium format camera, medium format digital with a very fast lens on it and a vintage design at that.

So we're gonna have a look at the first two images. Side by side.

This is Joe, my business coach. If you watched last week's episode, you might recognize her. we met up recently to do some contracts, set up as in I was trying to write some contracts for a project I'm working on. So we were in like a coworking space, and this is her having a cup of coffee made by the potter we just looked at actually, which is awesome. This is, Dave Parkinson's work, and they're beautiful drinking vessels with a real character.

but yeah, so the, these are the two images and if you look at them side by side right now, The first thing I want you to notice is how similar the colors are. the blue in her shirt is consistent across both images.

Her hair. It's got the same tonality in both images. The background, the blues, the blacks, the oranges, the golds. They're all very similar. If I was being picky, I'd say the image on the left has slightly less vibrance in the skin. This is a little bit less warm and a little bit less yellow with slightly more magenta on the left hand side, and the right hand image is slightly more pleasing to me.

I want you to take a second to guess, like which one of these do you think is the gfx and which one do you think. Is the X-H2s? the answer is the right hand image is the gfx. The left is the X-H2s, and for me, I like both of these images pretty much equally. If you gave me either, I'd be happy, but I enjoyed making the image on the right more.

It was more of a challenge.

So now what we're gonna do is look at another pair of images. We're gonna take a look at these two. Now this is super boring, but it's for a purpose, so bear with me. It's a really boring subject matter. We have a cordoned off section of this space, where in this is the Mackie Mayor in Manchester.

If you haven't been, you should go. The food's incredible. So when we're looking at these two photographs, you can clearly see the image on the right has significantly Less in focus. There is a sliver of this like rope that's been used cordoned off that area, and you can see towards the edges how the frame gets fuzzy and blurry and of more character as your head out towards the edges.

But again, in terms of color, there isn't a great dealer difference between this, these two cameras, there's a little bit more. On the image on the right, and there's slightly more magenta on the image on the left. But overall, these two images match together really well. And when we look at our next example, which is going back to Joe again in the same space, we see a similar story.

Colors look incredibly similar. The blues in this guy's jacket in the background, the orange of this pillar in the background, the skylight, all of these colors and tones match. And for me, this is massively important because if I'm gonna work on a project that requires that I work quickly, it means I can use a smaller format, Fujifilm sensor.

Whereas if I need to work on a project that allows me a little bit more control and I can be a bit more selective, I can make the image of the gfx know that those two bodies of work are gonna match together well.

So again, the left hand. Is the X-H2s. The right hand image is the gfx, and I just want you to have a look at these two and just see the difference in depth.

Even those, these two images have very different framing. You can tell that both images have a similar amount in focus, and this is the real strength of medium format. You can take a wider shot and be more selective about where you put your focus. But again, in terms of color, there's very little difference between these two cameras, and for me, that's ideal.

I want a situation where I could choose to use either, depending on what the job demands, what I want to get out of the situation, and that's it!

This is Paul Williams from Ginger Beard Weddings, and these two frames haven't been cropped yet. This should be pretty clear, which is which. You've got the 4:3 sensor of the GFX and the right, and you've got the 2:3 sensor of the X-H2s on the left.

And again, I can't see much of a difference in terms of tones. If you look at the kind of slatey blue color in the window frame here. That's consistent between both cameras. Look at Paul's shirt. You can again see the same kind of color tones being introduced in the highlights on his shirt.

The snakes reproduced with the same colors and that burnt orange, like renders exactly the same on both images. And if you look at other areas like skin tones, they're both incredibly similar. you could argue maybe there is slightly more magenta in the frame on the left, but overall, I don't think you'd see any difference between these two frames.

If you were delivering these to a client and this continues again and again looking at the frames in the front, the GFX does have something to it. You can tell this lens renders in a different, and slightly more interesting way than the lens on the left. The lens that Fuji's produced here is doing a good job of kind of looking similar, but it doesn't quite have the same level of character.

If you look at the areas in the front here with these picture frames, the kinda light reflections on the right hand side, it adds visual interest. Whereas on the left, it's just out of focus. And I think ultimately this is what I love about the gfx, it's just giving me a more balanced image, something that's got a little bit more interesting character when you want it.

But if I need something simple and I need a literal representation of the scene, the X-H2s is gonna provide that and still maintain a color consistency with the gfx. What does this mean for you? Basically, if you want to produce a consistent body of work and you want consistent color, the X-H2s is an incredible match for the gfx for a starter.

I am using the X-H2s to be a companion to the gfx. The images look similar enough between the two cameras that they would cut together well. Inside of a body of work, but I still have the option to choose something that challenges me a little bit more, more while I'm shooting.

So in cases where I can't dedicate the entire project to doing something that's a little bit more characterful and artistic, I still have a way of delivering something repeatable, consistent, and near perfect for my clients.

As you get further into your career, you're gonna find photography to be easier and easier, and what I want you to do is to challenge yourself technically, creatively, set yourself some constraints.

In my case, that was choosing a manual focus lens on a medium format camera with very restricted focus and trying to force myself to produce imagery that still felt authentic to me and characterful for you that might look different.

Maybe it's something as simple as choosing to shoot your automatic lenses at F8. You've got everything in focus to work on layering, or it could be a case of changing a color palette so that you produce something that's more akin to what you want to see. But in the end, what I really want for everybody listening today and everybody watching is for you to do something that makes photography more enjoyable for you, to help you to slow down, enjoy the process, and think carefully about what matters to you as an artist.

Thanks for listening, and I'll see you again next week.