Medium Format Photography

What's your budget Steve?
Is the camera purely for landscapes?
What do you want to do with the images once you've captured them?

I have a Mamiya 7 system, because it is the most portable medium format, but to be honest it gets almost no use now. Digital has made me very lazy, and unless you are selling your images do you really need MF?

Get the best of both worlds.

Get the digital back for the Mamiya.

In NAIM audio money it is not toooooooo dear.

24 million pixels too

regards David

Thanks for the prompt replies guys. I posted late last night and have been at work all day hence the delay in replying to your queries. I mainly want to take pictures of landscapes with a view to blowing them up big and using these as source materials for paintings. However, if I am really lucky there may be an occasion where I am in the right spot at the right time and the setting lends itself to taking a magnificent photo. You must always remember that dreams sometimes come true!

The problem with some digital cameras as I understand it is that they are limited in what they can be blown up to. The Nikon DX system being a case in point. I have some good Nikon prime lenses which I would like to keep. I had looked at second hand Mamiya RZ cameras and about £500ish pounds. I did not want to fully commit myself and find that I had a turkey on my hands and more trouble than it was worth in trying to get a good picture.

Anyway, I appreciate any comments and help.

SteveT

quote:

The problem with some digital cameras as I understand it is that they are limited in what they can be blown up to.

I know how you feel. I have used a Canon Eos 100 for about 20 years now with a couple of good lenses. I have enlarged some of my pictures to A1 size and they are superb.

However, I have dithered over going digital because everytime I have asked a camera shopkeeper (eg Grays of Westminster, Classic Camera, Galmut) about printing digital images captured on a (say) NikonD300 or Canon equivalent, they initially talk about A3 as if that would be "magnificent" and tell me that digital wipes the floor with an Eos100. When I mention A1 size, they are reluctant to commit- knowing i'd want my money back if the camers didn't perform.

I have also thought about Medium Format, but humping all that kit up and down Rockey mountains..........??

At present i'm thinking of a decent pocket-size digital + monopod on the basis that i will take them everywhere and 100 "good" memories at A3 size represents better value than 1 "exceptional" memory at A1 size taken during a "special" photography trip.

BTW, although I have mentioned A1 size, A3 size etc I only have a few A1 size prints, but quite often I will enlarge PART of an image to the equivalent of A1, but obviously that PART will only occupy an A3 or A4 size sheet of paper.

Decisions......decisions..........

Cheers

Don

If you are doing this for fun ....

Mamiya 7ii still a bit pricey, fantastic, sharp lenses, perfect for hand-held landscape.

Mamiya RZ - no go for an RB67, see below. Electronics can be flakey.

Mamiya RB67 - cheap, cheap, cheap, beautiful lenses, easy to focus, ideally need to use a tripod.

Hasselblad - I can't focus quickly with these, I've produced better prints with my RB than any of my 'blads. I regret buying the two bodies and two lenses.

645 - don't bother !

OR bite the bullet and go Large Format with 4x5 :-)

Also, why not try a rangefinder ? I still adore my Leica M6 and M3.

(I use Nikon D300 and Fuji S5 for my wedding work).

Cheers !
Ron

Steve, if it's just for references for paintings, I'd recommend a good quality digital camera with a high quality wide zoom lens and learn how to use Photoshop CS2-Cs4. Anything cheaper than a D3 and the image's tonal quality would start to become an issue if you were to capture that dream photo (you could just about get away with a D2x if you were very good with Photoshop).

Regarding enlarging digital images; given that the lens is good in the first place, an image size of 4256 x 2832 will happily blow up to A2 size. A1 is pushing it, but so is enlarging a 35mm trans to that size. I recently had an A2 print made to go in BAE Systems' reception, from a shot I took with my D2x three years ago. It was razor sharp, even from 12" away.

Medium format film is still and will always be great, but is it justifiable for references, due to the cost of film/processing? The trans film would give you a better tonal range than most digital cameras though.

A2 printing on my Epson 4880 is stunning from the D3X

Would easily do A1 on the bigger epson printer.

... and don't forget you can stitch digital images together so don't let in camera pixel dimensions bother you that much. Google a bit and you'll find examples of very big images created like that.

/david

eg
http://www.gigapan.org/index.php
http://www.tawbaware.com/maxlyons/gigapixel.htm
http://panotools.sourceforge.net/

/david

Food for thought..... I am never going to challenge Andreas Gursky or Joel Sternfeld in the photography stakes but by making a commitment to one system and then finding out later that it rules out the possibility of the other I would find aggravating in the extreme. I guess I just want my cake and to eat it at the same time. I have got an Apple and Photoshop and was looking at the Nikon D300 until the D700 came along.

Decisions, decisions...

Why do you need such a big print when you are going to make a painting based on it - or do you want to trace the image onto canvas.

A 6 by 4 inch print will give you the shapes and and aprox composition for you to apply the artistic skill to create an original painting

A professional artist (described as a modernist) that I know uses small photos to act as an "aide memoire" for when he returns to his studio to paint his interpretation of what he saw.

A professional artist (now retired) I knew used 35mm slide film and a decent quality slide projector for alot of his paintings.

Worked tremendously well for him - may be worth giving it a shot?

Peter