So, the rumors we posted were right and Sony is indeed entering the medium format world by producing CMOS sensor for Hasselblad. Obviously, the soon to be announced H5D-50C is expected to cost $1000 per million pixel which means…about $50,000 just like the model it replaces, the H5D-50 model (here at BHphoto).
But as I have been told by my Hasselblad sources there are other very interesting aspects to know:
1) Hasselblad and Sony are working on quite revolutionary new sensor tech that will fit in future medium format sensors. And some of this tech will spread to the lower “Full Frame” sensor market. (This comes via one of my good sources).
2) It has been not decided yet but it’s a possibility: Hasselblad and Sony could also launch “cheap” medium format cameras to seriously compete in Nikon’s and Canon’s High End Full Frame market. Pentax already did this with the [shoplink 24095 ebay]Pentax 645D (around $6000 or 6000 Euro here one Bay)[/shoplink].
Point 1) is almost certain to happen while 2) is just speculation. But I am curious to see how many of you would be interested to get this:
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6*6 MF cameras easily outperform top tier FF DSLR. zeiss lenses for 6*4.5 from contax were marvelous. Also 110 F2 planar was awesome
+1
And after having fitted a FF sensor inside an E-mount body, what about fitting a medium format sensor inside an A-mount body?
Is the mount wide enough?
Mount is not large enough. However swapping mount to the H and leaving body shape in the one A900 had would certainly make a bestseller in medium format market (even more so if Sony would make Zeiss design some lenses for the new camera)
The image circle of A-mount lenses would not be large enough to cover a MF sensor.
Well, you could make dedicated line of MF lenses (like what Sony did with introduction of FE to the E-mount). But I still think that mount throat is too limiting for MF. Who knows though – perhaps you actually can get it done with proper lens design. Obviously though such camera couldn’t be a DSLR – it’d either be SLT (with enormous beamsplitter) or fully mirrorless.
(oh – an before someone asks why bother with A-mount: because than you can use any A-mount lens with crop mode giving you by far more flexibility than any medium format system out there can offer)
0.001 $ per Pixel, 1000$ per Million Pixels
No, no. Its 1000$ per pixel.
It will be 50 pixel camera for people whining that there are too much pixels in modern cameras.
You surely mean $1000 per MPx, right?!
ops. Right!
Mirroless medium format .?
Now we have Phase detect on sensor why not It would destroy the rest of the market and you could mount all their lenses va a adaptor minus the Af put Medium Format is mostly for landscape anyway so who would care …….
A7 style but with a built in vertial crip and a larger bayonet for huge lenses ?? Whos with me …….Que : Tumble weed
You can not do that as simply as you think it might be. The circle a lens focuses on is important and the larger the sensor gets, the further the lens needs to be away from this sensor to allow the mirror to fit between it. Now, the medium format bodies we have today, are made for 6 x 4.5 cm film plane, or 6×6, 6×7, and many sensors do not have that size. The lenses are tailored for that mirror size and, distance since all those bodies, until today, have a mirror, except telemetric Mamyia Press, and Mamyia 7 and some Russian cameras with the same construction . Now, a mirrorless with such a sensor would bring the body back to a size a bit less thick as a DSLR in FF, but, this asks for new lens development, and using the old glass needs then an adapter who matches again that distance, lens to sensor, mirror included, same as the large medium format boxes, and that is the same we do with FF lenses on the A7 or NEX systems. To make it shorter we use M1 Leica mount or 39 mm. Making then a body in a way to just accept some of the Mamyia 645 telemetric systems like Mamyia Press and Mamyia7, can do the job, it would be a way to start with. But, I doubt that the industry will go this way, despite that surprises are not that seldom on those days.
Thank you for sharing that .
I agree.
I dont think theirs a market their .It was a interestig consept to think about tho.
Andrea, following the link you quote, the price of Hasselblad H5D-50 (body only) is $27,000 and not $50,000:
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/893190-REG/Hasselblad_H5D_50_DSLR_Camera.html
no for the price..
well, can i order the 3 MPixel version? i cant afford 50 GRAND for christ for camera.
It’s not just the number of pixels (although that itself presents a level of complexity), but the size of the silicon. Anything that large is going to have a high defect rate and thus a high rejection rate.
@ihateideiots
Actually, its not a bad as you might think because a lot of the CMOS image sensor elements are huge relative to other types of circuits. If it were that size wafer for a ASIC or other typical IC, you’d be spot on.
Also, most management at camera companies will accept a higher number of defects for image sensors than would even be conceivable for other types of IC. You still see camera companies that will sell a sensor with with a lot of defective circuits/photodiodes.
Look at the price difference of Lunar and Stellar compared to it’s counterparts. Low end camera is one thing, severely overpriced pro equipment for ‘lower end’ perfectionists is another.
And to that the weight and price of the medium format lenses 🙁
I am no medium format fan…..But….. if it was Sony and not hasselblad that made it.. and it had leaf shutter lenses. Or could be used with leaf shutter lenses… then that would be tempting
SONY
I Believe
HASSLE..
Its Hard To Believe
+1 for lame pun ;P
Actually, 6000$ for a medium format camera would make sense for a lot of people. The world is full of people who would pay for a D4/1dx if it wasn’t made exclusively for sports and video shooters.
I mostly do studio work and at the moment I’m using a Nex-7 for its adaptability and quality. My office’s 5dm2 doesn’t give much more(except for DOF) in quality so I don’t us it much. I only bring it out when I need the DOF (We have an 85/1.2L 😉 ).
Keep in mind that it’s a 2000$+ camera. Even if we had the new 5dm3, the quality wouldn’t be much better. We’d pay for the 1dx (or 1dsm3) but the result would mostly be the same and indistinguishable from my Nex-7 on screen or on paper (except when the DOF comes into play). Nikon front is a bit different since they have the D800. I can buy a A7R to match the sensor and actually top the experience since I can now use my iPad via Remote Live View. Cool.
For even better quality, I’d have to pay much, MUCH more. I can’t actually pay for a Leica S2 or a Hasselblad H4D or whatever they have now (We actually have a Lunar at the office too, LOL).
This is where a 6000$/€ medium format camera would come into play. It’s an amount I can pay and it’ll give me the quality a 35mm DSLR can’t provide.
for that price, make it fairly small, live vew and put a 20-24mm eqivalent lens in front of it, actually, I think I’d consider that one. Most of my landscape photo are done with a FF-camera with my old Minolta 24mm. For an amature like me, this would be an all out landscape camera.
how do you conclude that the D4 and 1Dx are exclusively for sports and video shooters? Sure, they are developed with the guys shooting sports in mind but they are very well suited for other areas of photography as well.
Surely, I could use a 1dx to shoot the interior of a building but it wouldn’t give me any benefits over a 5dm2. D4 doesn’t have anything superior compared to a D600 if I’m shooting in studio with some speedlights. I’d rather spend that extra 5000$ in something else and buy the cheaper camera.
If I could buy a camera which would be better than a FF DSLR in that context for 6000$, I’d do it.
I would get myself a $6K mirrorless medium format to go along with my A7, perfect combination!
in the end maybe FF is the one to die, MF, APS-C and mFT all survive.
Fullframe? who made the term fullframe?
I do not accept it, it is not FF(just tiny 135mm format).
Full means old in Japanese , after all 135mm is old dying format.
well done Hassy and Sony get out of this silly so-called tiny sensor FF world.
a decade ago no one called 135mm as FF, I really hate this fullframe or FX term.
it was just a tiny film format.
now, we really need some really digital-only format , no longer need film terms such as FF, FX, APS-C, 645,etc.
If the a7/a7r have proved anything it’s that there’s a lot of demand for competitively priced FF (it’s even got me contemplating e-mount)
Utter rubbish. For 645 to be remotely prevalent requires a jump in quality processes which does not exist today and unlikely for the next 10 years, never mind the need to build up an entire new lens system around the sensor. Enjoy lugging around large lenses much?
FF, 135, 35mm, however you wonna call it, has way way too many lenses available (old and new) in order to go the way of the DoDo anytime soon. Is for sure here to stay another 50 years or so at least. It’s time is just to start now in the digital age.
Doesn’t mean bigger and smaller formats won’t make sense, thought. Each sensor size has its advantage, as the optics are different for each dimension.
And the evidence for 35mm FF going out of fashion is what? There used to be a mass market for MF many years back, but that was largely due to the limitations of film. If you wanted high quality, you had to go to a larger format. Costs were within the reach of many amateurs, largely because the basic technology was fairly straightforward. Even a systems MF camera wasn’t much more than a box with a film back and one or more lenses with a leaf shutter. Lenses would be relatively simple and slow, and didn’t need to reach very high standards to produce acceptable results with the films of the day. After the 1950s, with very rapid advances in film and 35mm technology, MF gradually retreated into a niche for high end amateurs and professionals. Now, we are in a completely different space. MF technology has become increasingly expensive as, to make best use of an MF sensor you need very high specification lenses, which, for a given FoV have to be much larger than for 35mm (unless you make large sacrifices on aperture). The increased demands of digital means higher resolution and lower CA across a very large image circle, and the sensor itself becomes disproportionately expensive as it gets physically larger. If should be remembered that semiconductor technology has become much cheaper (largely) as it has become smaller. That does not hold true when the sensor cannot be reduced in size as it’s fixed by the chosen format. Not only will a large sensor cost more because it occupies more wafer “real estate”, but you get lower yields as there’s a proportionately higher change of a fatal flaw on the larger sensor. That’s even before lower volume is taken into account.
The results of all this? Essentially digital MF will remain a niche market targeted at only the very riches amateur and top end professional markets. The obvious target for those who are merely reasonably affluent will the 35mm FF as, for most purposes, it has the best tradeoff of quality, flexibility, cost and portability. For the vast majority of professional use it will be more than good enough.
In
Thanks Shamael for this explanation.
Amateurs are not aware of the kind pros work with MF. It seems to be more about customers inconclusiveness than photography. The pro needs technical reserves to crop and change many things according to customers wishes. These reserves are provided by MF digital backs. An amateur with a FF camera has more than enough, if he knows what he wants BEFORE taking the picture.
“in the end maybe FF is the one to die, MF, APS-C and mFT all survive.” – I would say something quite contrary: m4/3 will eventually die (think: 10-20 years) while we’ll see a resurrection of Large Format systems in digital, and hopefully: Medium Format will go waaaaaay down in price comparing to current level (think: for a price of current 5D mk III you’ll be able to get low-end MF in ~10 years – perhaps even sooner).
Quite right, 135mm format is NOT full frame. The term just means you are using all of the sensor, nothing more, so any size sensor is full frame if you are using all of it. I have always felt that a reversion to the old 135mm format was a retrograde step and that the difference in REAL EVERYDAY quality is not enough to justify the hype, let alone the cost. Of course, pixel poopers will not agree and probably shout at me, but who cares.
No for price and bulk. And price of the lenses ofc.
But then again those that do (paid) studio work on a daily basis would find it very, very appealing.
The market for MF has already shrunk to almost nil and this will do nothing to change that.
Previously there were excellent reasons for having such a format and making use of the film ‘real estate’ for the quality and ability to print large.
Now, however, the gap in quality has shrunk and in most cases is not an issue. What is more significant is the flexibility in use and a good DSLR offers so much more.
As with all things, people will pay if they get more for their money, or there is no other way to get what they need. MF costs a lot more, gives very little extra in terms of image quality, but loses on every other front. I see this as just part of the death throes of Hasselblad.
As far as Sony are concerned, if they cover their sensor fabrication costs, they would be happy, as being involved in high end equipment would help with image, especially if they are serious about moving in on the Canon/Nikon professional market.
I think it is a stretch to think that just because Sony manufactures MF CMOS-sensorfor Hasselblad that Sony would make a MF-camera.
Which lenses should go on that one?
Should Sony create a new, third mount for MF-lenses?
But it would be great with a small form factor mirrorless MF-camera with short register-distance so other manufacturers lenses would fit.
No, absolutely no Sony MF camera on the horizon I think for sure.
BUT! Maybe a Pentax 645 with CMOS-sensor. That’s more likely.
Leave the 6000$ and above cameras to those who have the hay to buy it, and earn money with that. Put a 36 x 36 square sensor in a A7, in 6000 x 6000 pixels, thus 36 mpix, or a 48 mpix based on the 36 mpix FF sensor, and here we go for glory. We will then still have 24 or 36 mpix in all direction, and can benefit from a square higher pixel count sensor. Make then also the menu in a way that we can select square and crops like FF vertical or horizontal, apsc, 4/3, and 1″ sensor crop size with adapters and lenses that fit that format, a square or rectangle that show the crop in EVF and life view LCD, keep the actual price of the boxes up, and we are on the market with the perfect camera that fits just anyone. What the market needs is a common AF system algorythm that allows adapters to focus with just any lens from any brand. I do not want to go so far that we use an unified mount, even if that was the real solution, one single mount for DSLR systems and one different unified mount for all mirrorless from 4/3 up. We can then still make lenses that match each single format for reasons of pricing, the way it is now. The actual market with individual mounts is a mess. Maybe the different manufacturers think that having individual mounts gives them an advantage. That was the case, but since NEX/A7/Fuji’s/Oly and Pana mirrorless, with adapter, allow just anything to be used on those boxes, that statement is now obsolete. If we all ask for that at any show, maybe things change, and such a change was a real good deal.
Square sensor absolutely!
Unfortunately, if Sony will make MF sensors, they will likely not be willing to canibalize that market.
Sure there is plenty of room in the e-mount to accommodate a beyond FF sensor size…
I’m glad to see someone else advocating for square sensors. Personally, while I’d be excited by a 36x36mm sensor, I’d positively drool over a 41x41mm sensor–providing for 3:1 single-shot panoramas within the 43mm image circle at 15.5 mpix with the pixel density of the A7.
The only way to get there is for large sensor production to become much cheaper, so I’m unreservedly cheering on all medium format systems. Well, but for the reservation that I can’t yet afford one.
6,000 Euros is too much for a hobby. We all have to turn Pro :).
Sony + Hasselblad working to create a competitor to the Leica S, right?
Makes sense. FF is getting cheaper and cheaper. The market could do with a ~$10k aspirational camera for wealthy enthusiast or poor professionals. Medium Format in a DSLR body could fit the bill.
While I do approve of the concept I would not be a customer.
Even a cheap mf is too expensive ant too bulky for me plus too little depth of field.
The only thing that would attract me would be higer res an that would requre at least 20:mp to justify the size.
Even if they did everything I want I would probably still not be a mf costomer.
Don’t forget the 3 terrabyte hard disk, the octocore super processor, the 256 gig ram, and all the time you spend to rework one single lousy picture. 180 – 250 mb for one file. Somewhere there are limits. Look today at shots from all current cameras, from 1″ to FF, and see if it is worth to spend money for a FF, except if you want real shallow DOF. I really don’t think so, at a size of 13 x 18 cm in print, only the DOF can let you guess what sensor size they used for the shot, if you can? Often you even can’t. I have seen Sony RX10 shots the other day, and I can only say, whooow.
Get real
$100,000 for a camera system and you are complaining about $100 for a 4tb hard drive.
My $600 laptop processes 200mp files in less than 5 minutes….get real!
+1
Lol, yes, what’s another $4000 for a Mac Pro and hard drives in the face of a $50,000 camera body.
Bulls**t!
I can configure a very powerful, quad core laptop, with 8-16GB of RAM, with a good enough dedicated video card, dual HDD, one being SSD, for about $1200.
Just because you know nothing about configuring your own hardware and due to that need to go to Apple, doesn’t mean that everyone has to.
Heck, my 6 year old desktop (Intel Q6700 Overclocked, 4GB Ram, nVidia GTX570, 2HDDs in Raid 0 Array) is processing a 24 MPix ARW file out of my A65 in seconds. I don’t see why even this PC would take a long time to process a 50MPix raw file.
On the other hand, a MF camera is useless for me, but that’s a totally different story.
…or a 200MPix raw file. It will take exactly 8.3 times longer per file than a 24MPix file.
Lol, configuring my own hardware? I’ve built computers, re-built laptops , modded workstations and repaired iPhones.
You know nothing of the world of high end photography if you think people using a 50k camera body are going to risk using a custom configured desktop with off-the-shelf parts. They generally use a Mac Pro with a digital tech on hand. That is what I was talking about.
There is no such thing as “too little depth of field”. H System lenses can be stopped down to F45 or F32. Of course, until now, the limited sensitivity of medium format sensors was a problem here, but that’s just what seems to be about to change from now on, with CMOS technology coming to medium format.
If you want shallow dof you dont want the same thing i do.
I want an entirecanimal in focus and sharp and a sharp background if I can get it.
Shllow dof and bokeh are wortless to me ….i only care about sharp and resolution and lots ok f dof.
Computer processing power and huge hard drives are cheap and redily availabl.
5 minutes to ok rocess a file (thats what a 200mp file ta know es to process ) is fine by me as it currently takes me hours to stitch together sufficient low res files to make what I need.
I do not at all want the same things you do.
I am also not a potential mf customer.
I see nothing wrong with what you want it just is totally not for me.
You should consider MFT then.
Wyy do you waste time with comments like that…show me a 200mp mft camera…in fact show me a 50 or 36 mp mft camera.
I’m afraid I failed to make myself understood. I, myself, need much DOF myself at least as often as I want shallow DOF, and my primary camera at this point in time is a Four Thirds DSLR 😉
But fact is, while you can’t get ultimately shallow DOF with a small sensor, you do get much DOF with large sensors, too. You just need to stop down the lens accordingly. You only have to be aware that overall image quality degrades, independently of sensor sizes, by the actual amount of DOF you achieve by stopping down.
Stopping down a lens to F32 is a good way of making sure nothing is truly sharp as the image will be heavily diffraction limited. At F32, the Airy disk will have a diameter of about 43 microns, whilst a typical MF sensor pitch is in the 5-6 micron region. That might be OK if you don’t mind down-sizing output, but it won’t be much good if you want to make the best possible use of those very expensive MF pixels.
Quite simply, great depth of field and ultimate sharpness are fundamentally incompatible as diffraction takes over as a lens is stopped down. The only way of achieving both in a conventional camera and lens combination is to use sophisticated software to “stack” images focused at different points.
True, but in the end that’s independent of the sensor size. For the same demands on output quality, you have the same degradation by diffraction, and the same DOF, regardless whether it’s FT with 25mm and f/11, or FF with 50mm and f/22, or MF 36×48 with 70mm and f/32.
True, but other practical factors come into play if you go for the perfect equivalence model. For instance, the small sensor will (all other things being equal) saturate before the larger sensor as the total number of photons fall over a smaller area. Also, at the wide aperture end, then it’s probably not practical to produce the equivalent of a 50mm f1.2 135 format lens for a Nikon S1, as it would be about 14mm at f0.3 even if it would, in theory, allow for similar shallow DoF. Even if such a lens was possible, it would, of course, be huge compared to the camera it was attached too.
So, different formats are going to be better for some functions, at least at the extremes of photography, as practical matters kick in. As it happens, I rather think 135 format is at a sweet spot as it has unrivaled flexibility, simply because the lenses required for such things as very wide angle, extreme telephoto and so on are not too outlandish. Also, it seems to be at something of a sweet spot on photo-cell size, as it’s possible to cram in an awful lot of sensors whilst maintaining very good dynamic range.
Steve–
I have been following this excellent discussion, and have little to add.
The one thing to which I would take exception is your opinion that FF sensors currently offer “very good DR”. In terms of ultimate image presentation, I disagree, but that is just my opinion, as “very good” is a subjective measure.
Thanks to you and others like Hubertus for classing up this place.
So while you guys are patting each other on the back with bull$$¡ГГ reasons why high resolution is impossible the government is photopraphing the dandruff on your shoulders fro a satelite 200 miles away.
Nobody said any such thing that high resolution wasn’t possible. What was stated (at least far as far as conventional lenses are concerned) is that you can’t have sharpness with large depth of field. That is you can’t have the foreground sharp all the way out to infinity as, when you stop down, diffraction kicks in.
In the case of a spy satellite in low Earth orbit (around 160km), it’s very easy to plug in the numbers. If you take a very modest ambition of resolving down to 1 metre at the Earth’s surface, and assume a sensor pitch of 6 microns, you need to cover at least 2 photosites, so the image has to be 12 microns across. In fact you can do that with a rather modest (in telescope terms) 2,000mm lens. Go for an f5.6 aperture, and that gives you a front element diameter of around 360mm. Expensive, but perfectly reasonable in the world of refractive telescopes. Of course, you’ll probably go for a telephoto design to make the lens rather shorter.
So this, and set it to focus at the hyperfocal distance, and everything from about 60km altitude down to the Earth’s surface will be in focus.
Of course, if you increase the focal length, you can increase the resolution at the Earth’s surface at the expense of increasing the size of the lens. You’d probably also want the largest size sensor you can manage as the total FoV will be measure in minutes of arc.
So you can see, that even with basic lens calculations sub-metre resolution is perfectly feasible, at least in theory and DoF is not an issue. The optical engineering challenges are very demanding, but astronomical telescopes have been in this area for many decades. It’s just hideously expensive. There’s also the very tricky issue of the Earth’s atmosphere to deal with, but these days we have the great advantage of image enhancement technology using supercomputers, and you can guarantee that government spy agencies have access to the best. Also, software image enhancement can help deal with many of the lens abberation issues that might occur.
So I very much doubt that governments can see dandruff, but it’s perfectly credible they can read something the size of a car license plate.
Just to do a sanity check, I looked for some real info, and there’s this declassified US “spy” satellite from the late 1980s. It used film and a panoramic lens of 77 inches (very close to my 2,000mm example) to resolve down to object sizes of about 0.6-1metre, again very close to my numbers.
http://www.space.com/12996-secret-spy-satellites-declassified-nro.html
Of course, things will have moved on, both in sensors, optics and, especially, image enhancement. However, the fundamentals of optics remain.
Just in case you want to try this yorself..
Celestron c8…use the older black model..not the newer falat field model
2035mm f8 8″ scmidt cosseigrain catadioptic.
Add a f6.3 focal reducer to make a 1250mm f6.3 lens or remove the adaptor and use as 2035mm.
My understanding is reasonable resolution but ‘ll acking in contrast
12 lb, 18″
I was thinking about trying that but changed my mind when I heard about this 150-600
You’re making it hard for me not to reply… No, you can’t read a license plate from low Earth orbit with a sub-meter telescope; you would just see a blob of the plate. Actually reading the plate from 160km would require about a 3.2-meter telescope (using your 6µm pixels, f/12 will resolve a line pair in visible light) I’m assuming a broad 2.5 cm (1″) resolution on the license plate. Also, the license plate would have to be facing upwards… :o)
Hey Barry, I’ve actually done that with my C8 for moon picts! “Old?” Wow, I’ve had this for 28 years! Not just the scope that’s “old”…
Lifestory
Since you have used a C8 tell me what you can as far as usefullness for birds with/without reducer
Sharpness, resolution etc,
Correction…i meant to say 200mp not 20mp
It’s not just Hasselblad; the same sensor is expected to be in PhaseOne’s rumoredly upcoming IQ250 medium format digital back.
http://photorumors.com/2014/01/21/phaseone-iq250-coming-soon-with-a-new-50mp-cmos-sensor/
It’s still not clear that the sensor will have the same low-light qualities as current DSLR and mirrorless sensors, though, as it is only said to go up to ISO 6400.
what is a real progression, since until now, none of that sensors was able to give a good result beyond 800 iso. If you get a clean shot at 1600 iso, it is a huge step forward, despite that those who use such cameras do not seek for that sensitivity anyway.
The sensor on Phase One is different, it is a Cmos, while the Hassy/Sony is a CCD
The information given on that site is false, the Hasselblad 50 mpix is a CCD, the site says Hasselbald’s H5d-50c 50 mpix Cmos, what is false info.
I have seen that Hassy announced a new cmos based 50c, thus the info can be considered correct after all. So, let us see if Phase one pulls back or takes the challenge. If they use the same sensor, it could be they retract, except of they can beat the price.
The sensor is a 36 x 48 in size, and at 50 mpix we have a density equal to 24 mpix, thus twice the A7 sensor.
Who would want such camera for some pictures and videos…Celebrities? do they care about carrying such biggie? Hollywood? Is it capable for that?
short booted Asians, it makes them look bigger
Usual ignorance from the mirrorless dude to anything else than his own tiny needs.
A) Product photographers
B) Photographers who would seek to shoot a portrait with both a wide FOV and shallow DoF ( see the portraits of Richard Avedon – he shot with an 8×10 large format camera close to his subject)
C) Architecture / interior photographers
architecture/interiors – yes.
The good ones I know still shoot MF film and have it scanned, and the results are sweet.
However, I don’t know that they would move to digital. I was talking to one guy in particular who doesn’t think the advantages would be worth the cost.
This guy is a pro, nationally known and sought-after. Excellent stuff. All natural light. He still does previews with Polaroid, and counts shutter speed aloud.
He already has a lot invested in his system, which is excellent, and pricey, and which never fails him–NEVER. He couldn’t see any incentive to switch systems. He knows exactly what result he will get before he exposes the image. He operates in a narrow photographic band, and within that band he is an absolute expert.
Is this not the typical MF photographer? It seems to me that it should be, for somebody to have invested as much as this guy, into his MF gear and learning about actual photography, not just pointing and firing away at 10fps.
gr##sh,@%, is there not a way to make a refresh button on your captcha, if you forget it or it is false, all your written text is lost. Is that absolutely necessary?
lol! I know that pisses me off all the time!
Ok a 5000 dollar medium Format with Sony’s name on it using the Hassey mount.
Three lenses is usually enough with MF.
Not wanting to excuse the captcha implementation, but if you get an account for the site and log in, you can post without needing to go past a captcha.
Ain’t this stuff only for pro shooters who need the most MP’s?
They got paid, so they buy almost whatever the price is.
I am waiting for a APS-C sensor size RX10.
The RX100 is excellent but a few times I need some better high ISO performance
is a small and low weight body. NEX ok, but would prefer a RX10.
I would really be interested if it was released with a wide range of lenses; 24mm FF equivalent to 400mm FF equivalent.
I am tired of scanning my 645 negatives. Bring it on!
lol 🙂
You would need to be earning a lot of money from your photography to justify moving up to medium format. The tiff files alone, for instance, when you convert from RAW, would be something like 350mb in size. You would need some pretty fancy computer processing power to handle such files, 8-core processor, 32gb of RAM, that sort of thing, and you would also need to really go high end with your imaging software too! All this would cost many thousands on top of just buying an MF camera, and we haven’t even got around to talking about extra lenses! I definitely can not afford a move up to medium format, and I suspect neither can many of you reading this either, but, you know, I am not sure I even want to!!!!!!!!!
These computing requirements are over-rated.
For 10 years now, my wife has been PP’ing MF scans (architecture/interiors), using Photoshop. Even 10 years ago it was possible, although slower than it is now, for a given investment in computing gear.
Now for a thousand dollars she uses a Dell box, which is faster than what she was using in the past.
No, she doesn’t get results the instant she executes a function–but neither is it laborious or tedious.
BTW the photographer chafes massively at any PP, even simple cropping–ESPECIALLY simple cropping! She keeps it to a minimum.
$100 for 4tb hd $600 for laptop computer that processes 200mb tiffs in under 5 minutes.
I guess you spent your entire $100,000 budjet on the camera system and cant afford that.
Did you actually read the nonsense you just wrote?
Five minutes! Are you kidding me? So you come in from a photo shoot with 200 RAW files in your MF camera, which is not that unusual, and, lets be generous, you process each one on your laptop in five minutes flat from start to finish. If you have no breaks that works out at 16.666 hours worth of continuous processing, two working days solid! Good luck with that!
Yes that would be agonizingly slow, but to be fair Barry didn’t specify what software he is using, nor did he specify exactly what particular processing he was doing.
5 minutes is very long except in a true art-oriented environment, and even then…
I remember my wife working on large files in the mid-late 90’s on Silicon Graphics machines, which processing sometimes took an hour…and which sometimes took…HOURS.
Yes, fair point, and apologies to Barry! I suppose it all depends on what you are comfortable with and what works best for you. The principle I was trying to lay down, in broad terms, was that the file sizes from the latest cameras are getting so large that consideration must be given as to whether your existing computer hardware and software is up to the job. The leap into medium format is a substantial one where file sizes are concerned and upgrading your processing capability to cope could be quite pricey! Best regards!
Set them up in q and do something else..
You dont have to wait for them.
Some commercial shooters can afford to buy or rent it. When I was starting out, I assisted a commercial photographer who billed out nearly 6 figures for a 3 day shoot of food products. He was shooting with a 1-ds and tilt- shift lens (back when the 1ds was nearly 10 grand). There was a 3 day studio rental, a first assistant plus two additional assistants, and a prima Donna food stylist to pay for but there still must have been a great profit for it.
I would be interested in (in the following order):
1. A FF Monochrome NEX/ILCE.
2. Non Bayer CFA, color successor to A7R with a quiet shutter and higher bit depth output.
I would also like to see (immediately) better flashes/wireless accessories for the Alpha system(s).
Absolutely no interest in medium format sensors/cameras/lenses be it Hasselblad or Nikon or Sony.
Then your comment wasn’t necessary, was it?
If somehow the Sony camera can adapt all kind of lenses just like E mount, I would buy for sure no questions asked, but at the moment I just started saving and entered $2 in the piggy bank, 3 years to go! Bring it on Sony!
If Hasselblad can make money selling a few cameras for $27,000 I suppose Sony could make money opening up the market wider at $6,000 especially if they have comparative advantage of mirrorless. However, the last thing Sony needs right now is dividing thin resources over supporting another mount system. 🙂
Mirrorless with EVF would be a huge disadvantage on MF. You obviously never shoot with MF nor looked through it’s viewfinder that you talk stuff like that, lol.
For $10000 sensor it makes sense to create different bodies, with and without mirror and pentaprism. Pentaprism is proportional to frame size, so it’s veryyyy large on MF. Mirrorless MF camera in size could be between FF DSLR and crop DSLR.
Size and brightness of viewfinder isn’t everything. Some of those viewfinders are so large that you can’t oversee the whole scene, especially with glasses.
On the other hand, a mirrorless MF camera eliminates the massive MF mirror slap and allows for continuous LV, which can be very helpful using large monitors and/or with clients attending the session. As a bonus, it can also reduce size and weight.
I believe that the vast majority of those who voted “NO” above are users that wouldn’t likely even consider using MF digital cameras. Whether this is because price point alone or just speed and features, MF digital has a very specific market segment.
On the other hand, if the question was phrased like: “If you are someone who has considered buying a MF camera at current prices, with the current features and limitations, or have used a MF digital camera in the past, would you consider a mid-end MF camera for 6k?”
Then I am sure the amount of Nos will decline and the amount of maybes will increase considerably.
I would consider a MF camera at that price point, just because Sony CMOS is way better than the Pentax CCD in the 645D but I would want a body of similar quality.
I think that majority who voted “no” did it simply because 6000 euro is still way above their budget. Majority of people shoots with cameras that cost less than a 1000 euro – so how you expect anything else than “no” winning in that poll?
Saw a video of pro taking class offered by Hasselblad trying to convince pros to switch to MF. While he thought his results were marginally better the incredible hassle of using that system (e.g., shooting handheld pretty ridiculous) didn’t seem to sell him.
So simply dropping price to match high-end pro DSLRs isn’t enough. That’s why we’ll just have to disagree on mirrorless to reduce the Hasselblad’s greatest hassle: bulk. High end EVF is problem Sony needs to solve. BTW, I haven’t gone mirrorless myself yet so don’t consider me a cheerleader.
Another problem for MF is system lens cost. Low volume, higher material costs make $6,000 for a MF body just the start. Hasselblad glass is good but makes Sony Zeiss brand look a WalMart store brand. 🙂
No no and no. You already have to much of my money- so no. There is no freakin way on God’s green earth that MF can possibly offer enough over FF to justify the price. Not for the common photographer. Hell….freaking…..no.
Now, can you please direct me to where I can pre-order this thing….
Yes I would consider buying a simpler medium format camera BUT ONLY IF the sensor is 6×7, 6×6, or 6×4.5 and NOT those small crippled mf-sensors that are standard today. I would NEVER move from 24×36 to 33×44 for example, totally meaningless.
Very true.- I agree. The problem is not makeing a large sensor but processing power needed to download such a data amount of data from a large 6×45 or a 6×6 sensor is still the issue. However it will come. The 59×36 should be good enough for the moment and will give enough DOF from wider lenses and have enough resolution for most high end media work.
Samsung has also been investigating mirrorless MF cameras for a while without making a lot of noise..
http://photorumors.com/2011/05/18/samsung-working-on-a-medium-format-digital-camera-system/
2014 is going to be a lot of fun 😉
Do I see a 2011 date in that link?
I want to see Sony offer 16 bit color space on a full frame sensor. It might make the images appear more medium format like and close the gap a little further.
Does that actually do anything for res/detail/sharpness, maybe I don’t know what
I am talking about but I would think that just increases the amount of different colors….which I hear that gets almost undetectable depending on the output device.
Maybe all this color depth is slowing things down in the processing end of the camera and causing issues with burst rate/ flash synch. etc…..not sure… help me out?
Ian its not just bit depth, its also the physically larger sensor- due to physics, this is what constitutes more depth and “3D like” qualities in medium-format images.
When I look at a photo taken with a full frame sensor and another photo taken with a medium format sensor I am always blown away by the medium format photo. It seems more lifelike. The tonal range is much more in 16 bit color depth making smoother gradation from light to dark. I think there are people who can not tell the difference and do not understand why major commercial photoshoots opt for a medium format to get the extra edge in their photos.
Hm…
A MF camera with a flange focal distance around 40 something mm with a lot MPix just for ultra-wideangle from a tripod would be nice! You need for instance a 35mm lense, which is much easier to design and which don’t need to much correction in the end.
My concern is that Sony would sign a noncompetition agreement with Hassie – to limit the megapixels or advanced tech in FF cameras, like Sony did with Nikon. I guess we’ll see soon enough as it’s a Photokina year, and a new A99 replacement should be due soon.
This pole is so useless. Too much enthusiast/hobbyist readership at this site, while medium format only really benefits professionals with commercial clients. Not to say enthusiasts wouldn’t enjoy a medium format either, its just not as much of a direct benefit. I would welcome a cheaper medium format body, its a pain renting hasselblads and Leafs especially here in the Caribbean.
“Hasselblad and Sony are working on quite revolutionary new sensor tech that will fit in future medium format sensors.”
There is nothing revolutionary about 50mpix 36mm x 49mm sensor – this is simply the sensor from D600/A99 etc etc with double the size.
How about a 6×6 digital Holga back? 🙂
A low cost MF-camera isn’t possible yet, due to the complicated shutter mechanism, whether that’ll be in-lens leaf shutters or in-camera curtain shutters. Not earlier than the moment a working full electronic global shutter is presented, a low cost MF camera can be expected. Of course it cannot be something else than mirrorless (another very pricy part, the mirror mechanism!).
And I find the best MF’s were 6×7 (56×72 mm). A supersized Nex7 based on the Mamiya 7 would be very nice!
Holga shutter works fine so long as you’re happy with just one speed – 2 if you include B 🙂
OK, so it looks like Hasselblad won’t have any exclusivity here. Phase One is expected to officially introduce IQ250 on Friday featuring, guess what, 50mp CMOS sensor based back
I would get one but I’d like to see one made 🙂
6k€ raises the question: what is left out? Buying in that bracket is more a question of feature set and practicality – the hole in the wallet hurts at the moment but fades after a little while. Annoying quirks and flaws, be it in the camera as such or a matter of the whole ecosystem, would haunt me for much longer, possibly generations of bodies…
I think this is exciting! I would easily spend $6000.00 on a medium format body or even a better full frame body from Sony! I can’t afford any systems from Phase,Hassy,or Leaf/Mamiya. Sony seems to be in a good position to put out a camera that can match the output of these medium format cameras and do it for a reasonable price.
Hey gyus! How much have you spent on FF equipment? I have $12K on Canon stuff and now $5K on A7r?
MF with lenses will easily end up round $30K! Don’t talk about $6000.
Sure it is better and there are people needing it -fine. But there is always a better camera or lens to buy and a better sensor next year…….
How much can YOU spend?
I voted that ‘I don’t know yet’. I’m pretty well invested with pricey A-Mount glass so I’d rather see a successor to the A99. Currently, I’m still chugging along with my A900 as the A99 never really grabbed my attention.
+1- same boat.
Does anybody really need more than 36+ mega-pixels? Well some photographers do, but not many.
With current technology full frame (35 mm) max is probably between 48 & 64, and if the lenses can give sharp to 100 % enlargement at that count what is the advantage of medium format. (smaller has the advantage for travel/location work).
A medium format back for my 6×9 view camera would be interesting to me. That would give me back unrestricted lens movements. But I do not need it.
This is a forum dominated by ff and c format users.
The fact that over 30% of this group would consider a mf camera is actually a very impressive and positive result.
Hasselblad is known for re-branding Sony cameras… does’t this mean Sony will produce its own MF for Hasselblad to re-brand?
I think its a great that Sony seems to keep on innovating, while the other major camera manufacturers keep churning out the SOS.
I’d certainly consider a medium format designed, and built by Sony for under $6000.00.
But how much would MF lenses cost?
It would definitely up my game, and I’d just increase my rates. I’d be an easy to up-sell customers to medium format, and charge extra for the enhanced image quality.
Maybe a 25% or 33% premium.
As much as I would love to shoot ‘medium format’ I really couldn’t afford it. If I was about 15-years younger I would most certainly consider it. As I’m sure most of you know it’s not just the camera body, but everything that goes with it, especially lenses! Heck, I am a lens fanatic and I always buy the best that I can afford. Nothing beats the quality of my previous Leica primes but Zeiss is close enough, combined with being a auto-focus for us Sony folks.
These days it’s more about maximizing the use of what I have, or can reasonably afford. I went down the Primrose-Path with Leica in 2008 and I’m still paying off that ill-fated venture. Have no plans to repeat history, although whatever follows the A99 I would definitely consider.
After using the Sony A7 , A65 and the Nex series cameras, yes I will buy a mirrorless Medium format camera, with a shalower body and shooting faster than any mirrored camera. Hopefully with a OLED vdigital view finder. Like the A7 system, then I can adapt to use all my other lenses from various manufactueres.
Yes !!
I Need Leaf Shutter or electronical Shutter Lenses