Medium Format Camera Reviews

I’m hardly what you’d call a Film Dinosaur. Over 98% of the images I shoot are captured digitally. But, after I recently ran a dozen rolls of Kodak Tri-X 120 through some ancient medium-format roll film cameras, and had it developed, scanned, and printed on Fuji Crystal Archive photographic paper, I’m a much better digital photographer because of it.

Just the other day a buddy of mine bought the Hasselblad he'd always wanted but couldn't afford at the unheard price of $475. It was a 20-year-old Hasselblad 500C/M, the functional equivalent of the current 500C/W. He purchased it from a private seller for $475 in near-mint condition, complete with 12-exposure back, waist-level finder, and 80mm f/2.8 Carl Zeiss...

Arguably, the biggest camera news at this year’s photokina show in Cologne, Germany was the announcement of the new Fujifilm GFX, a medium format mirrorless camera, which was unveiled to much fanfare on Monday. Shutterbug was one of a handful of media outlets to get our hands on a prototype of the 51.4-megapixel GFX and try it out for about half an hour in a conference room at the show.

The Hasselblad 907X 50C camera is so different from the sorts of cameras most of us shoot with, I feel like I almost need a new vocabulary to describe it. If a visitor from Area 51 handed me the device used on their planet to take pictures, I’d expect it to strongly resemble this ‘blad. It is at once familiar and yet radically different. Using it made me feel like I was at Disney’s World of Tomorrow exhibit, sampling the future and finding it surprisingly intuitive.

The new Hasselblad X1D is a very compact medium format system, thanks in part to its use of an electronic viewfinder system rather than the usual mirror box design. Based on the same sensor as the Hasselblad H5/6D-50c, the camera has a 43.8x32.9mm CMOS sensor with 50MP resolution (8272x6200 pixels).

Los Angeles-based boudoir photographer Michael Sasser recently started shooting with a Fujifilm GFX 50R, a 51.4MP medium format camera in a compact, rangefinder-style body. This is unusual for Sasser since he typically shoots with Sony full frame mirrorless cameras.