CCC Forum

The latest post at The Online Photographer:

http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.co ... index.html

It does make me wonder who will be buying these cameras. Hasselblad is reported to be struggling to meet demand for the X1D, so these uber machines appear to be what at least some want and can afford. And it will not just be professionals, where I can at least comprehend there is a need. It would be a surprise if image quality is anything but wonderful, but 50 MP? Come on. That's enough to make a print which is the size of a house. The high resolution will show up the slightest bit of camera shake, so to get the best results means high shutter speeds. Or a tripod. Not to mention the consequent computer upgrade to process and store those large files.

If money were no object, would you buy one of these cameras? OK, if money really were no object, I probably would. Both systems, naturally. I am not sure how much I would actually use either of them, though.

I should, perhaps, qualify my previous comment. While 50 MP is more than sufficient for the largest prints most people will want to produce, a larger sensor does confer other benefits. Dynamic range will be better and noise will be lower. The longer focal length of the lenses will render the transition to out of focus areas more smoothly and depth of field will be shallower. Those last two will be subject dependent, of course. Diffraction also becomes less of an issue. With an increased light gathering area, the size of the aperture at any given stop will be larger.

The drawbacks I noted in my last post still apply. Not to mention that anyone spending around £7.5k on a body and 63 mm standard lens will probably have their more urgent needs already met. And that £7.5k is just a starting point into the system. Compared to what people have previously been paying for digital medium format equipment, it still represents something of a bargain though.

If I could afford it, I'd have one. I like Fuji in general and this looks like a cracking camera. The problem is that breaking into a new camera type is just too expensive.

Still working on Fuji to loan me a review copy