Dan Havlik

We’ve seen some damaged camera gear before but this photo of a scorched DSLR takes the cake. No, it didn’t fall into a pit of lava while capturing the erupting Kilauea volcano in Hawaii. It actually encountered something nearly equally as fierce: the blast of a rocket launch.

Some photo assignments require you to bring out the big guns. And when it comes to digital photography, there are few bigger guns than medium format systems. More digital SLR users have been making the jump to medium format now that several new models are equipped with CMOS sensors that can capture relatively low-noise images at high ISOs, shoot photos more quickly, and capture HD and even 4K video. Combine these handy features with the massive amount of resolution and extremely high image quality you get from the huge imaging chips in medium format camera systems, and there’s no better time to go big. Here’s a look at the latest cameras and lenses from five major medium format brands.

Hasselblad showed off its new H6D medium format camera at an exclusive media event in New York City today and Shutterbug was on hand to test out this hotly anticipated system. The H6D camera, which was officially announced last week, comes in two versions: the H6D-100c with a 100-megapixel CMOS sensor, and the H6D-50c with a 50MP CMOS sensor.

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.