Steve Spencer
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 p.6 #9 · Adapting Lenses to the Fuji GFX | |
gdanmitchell wrote:
Agree. For some work I use a Pentax 80-160mm 645 lens on a TS adapter on my FF body a fine lens, for sure.
As with any category of lenses including FF lenses adapted to miniMF some are better and/or more/less appropriate than others
Regarding a different post and as to aspect ratio, my preference is for the 4:3 ratio of miniMF, and I most often crop my FF images to that format, giving up something approximately 10+% of pixels. Regarding things like a square crop on miniMF systems like the GFX, I can imagine that a very small percentage of users might want to "go there" a lot, and for them the crop would be less significant. But I'm betting that the great majority want the 44mm x 33mm area. YMMV.
That's where I'm coming from. I have been very excited by the prospect of reasonably priced miniMF systems, and I know folks who use them. And that has given me an interesting chance to directly compare expertly made prints from a range of systems, from 80MP Phase One backs, to the Pentax 645z, to various full frame systems from Sony, Nikon, and Pentax.
In this forum I have previously described a test that a member of our print review group* did at one of our meetings. He brought four very boring 8.5" x 11" prints of similar test shots that included a lot of detail including foliage. Without explaining their source, he placed them on the table and asked us to describe what we noticed. All of us are skillful photographers and printers, so we are fairly good judges of such things. The general response was that we could tell that image pairs were not identical, but we were hard pressed to identify the specific differences and there was no uniform agreement to which were better.
The big reveal was the following. Two of the image pairs came from the 80MP Phase One back and used one of the lenses he typically used on that system. The two images of the other pair were photographed with the Nikon FF system using the current Nikon 80mm-400mm lens. And those little prints were actually crops of sections from images that had been resized to 30" x 40".
Now I am not going to claim that a 36MP FF system can produce the same resolution as a 80MP MF system. But I am convinced that the differences, at least with photographs made and printed by experts, is much smaller than we might wish. And that leads to why I have not moved to a miniMF system like the GFX, at least not yet...
The print quality from a well-shot (good lenses and good technique) 51MP FF system can be excellent. My own tests show that a very high quality 30" x 45" print is pretty straightforward, and that larger prints are quite possible. So, for me, as much as I wanted to love the miniMF systems and I still do! my practical decision was that the basic IQ improvement would be mostly theoretical, given the same pixel dimensions and only modestly larger sensor area, and that the functional costs of not having access to the excellent range of lenses I regularly use on my FF system would be a larger negative.
Now, I may still reconsider at the point that 100MP miniMF sensor become available. But even that would produce differences that would not be meaningful until at least the 30" x 40" print size, plus I'd still have to give up certain lens options that I currently rely on a lot.
On the other hand, if the lens issues are resolved (100mm-400mm equivalent?), and at costs that aren't too absurd, a two-format system comprised of a small 1.5x cropped sensor system (like my XPro2) for my street and travel photography combined with a higher MP miniMF system may someday make sense. Though I'm still not seeing a path to either of those being ideal for my wildlife (especially bird) photography, for which my 5DsR does a commendable job.
Again, YMMV.
Dan
*I don't name-drop without the permission of photographer/friends, so the photographer will remain anonymous, but with a few hints. He was an Adams protege in the 1980s, shot BW then color LF film for many years, began scanning it and producing beautiful dye transfer prints, moved to Phase One MF backs when he became convinced that they equalled the quality of his LF film, now uses the Pentax 645z and the Nikon D810. You'll find his work in respected galleries. The test described above was preparatory to his departure to teach a couple of workshops in Antarctica, where he was mostly going to shoot handheld and where he had to deal with limits on the size and weight of the equipment he could bring, and was thus interested in how a FF system would compare with results from his existing MF system....Show more →
Dan,
I am not sure that a test done in a better way might not show results that could be seen, but I think that is beside the point. I agree that the increase in resolution and even dynamic range and color are small. If that is what you are after, then you will be paying a lot more for some pretty small gains. I personally would not recommend the system to somebody who only wants to shoot landscapes. For me, I appreciate the small increase in landscape shooting, but it is for portraits and the range and flexibility of the lenses, and tilt/shift shooting with the Cambo Actus that sold the system for me. I think both those areas have some clear advantages that cannot be matched with 35mm. Not that you can't do those things well with 35mm--you of course can--but there are some abilities (like leaf shutter lenses, and flexibility in lens choice and ability to apply title and shifts) that set the GFX apart. I am happy I got the camera, but I realize it isn't for everyone and probably isn't even for very many people at all.
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