molson wrote:
One characteristic of the medium format cameras that's hard to get across in small web images is the different perspective you get using longer focal length lenses. With a wide lenses like the 23mm f4, you can capture a wide view without diminishing the size of your foreground subjects as much as you would with an equivalent angle of view on a miniature-format camera..
OK, perhaps I'm being dense this morning (time for more coffee), but that isn't quite making sense to me, at least not if I understand you correctly.
What I think you are suggesting is something like the following:
1. You might choose to use a lens that provides a larger angle-of-view in order to be close to a foreground subject (rendering it relatively large in the frame) while including a "wide view" of the more distant background elements (rendering them small). (I've heard this common landscape approach referred to as a "near-far" composition, and it is indeed a common one.)
2. You might use a lens such as the 23mm on the GFX miniMF system to allow you to be close to a foreground subject (rendering it relatively large in the frame) while including a "wide view" of the more distant background elements (rendering them small).
3. If you wanted to accomplish something similar with a full frame system you would use a shorter focal length to achieve the same angle-of-view on the smaller sensor system.
4. You suggest that you would have to change your camera position from what you used with the miniMF lens that provided the same angle-of-view.
That last part — my #4 — is where I'm not following you.
If you use two systems with different focal lengths that provide the same angle-of-view, you should be able to keep your camera position exactly the same. What you write, at least as I read it, would be correct if you pointed out that on any individual format when you switch to a longer/shorter focal length you will need to change your camera position if you want foreground objects to remain the same size — and that this will affect the relative size of other objects in the composition.
But that doesn't seem relevant to the format comparison, where you'll have exactly the same angle-of-view and "perspective" from the original camera position when you use the equivalent focal lengths on the two systems.
