What You Should Know Before Buying a Medium-Format Camera

Photography Tips

For many photography enthusiasts, jumping to a full-frame camera system is a big deal. The amount of time spent researching the jump is quite significant. Similarly, when experienced photographers decide to go further and explore using big-sensor cameras, things aren’t much different. These cameras are not just expensive—they’re also unpredictable. Today, we have professional landscape photographer Mark Denney to answer some common questions and highlight problems he’s faced regarding the purchase of a camera with a big sensor.

Denney has been shooting with a Fuji GFX 100S for a couple of years. So he has a good idea of what it’s like working with a medium-format camera.

When we think of medium-format cameras, we immediately imagine everything gets to a bigger scale. Bigger body, heavier lens, higher power consumption, bigger file size and whatnot. Denney talks about all of this in the video. But he also talks about one important thing that nobody warned him of before he jumped to a medium-format camera:

“That insane depth of field can also come at a cost, especially for landscape photography.”

You know how a larger sensor means the depth of field becomes shallower, right? While this is a good thing for portrait and product photographers, Denney has one particular challenge with it when doing landscape photography. In landscape photography, we love seeing things in sharp focus from front to back. When using a medium-format camera, it is too easy to end up with images that are out of focus because of the immensely shallow depth of field. You therefore need to be very careful, review your images stringently and even focus-stack more than you would when using smaller sensors. As Denney shares, he never had to focus-stack as much as he did with this system.

Are you thinking of getting yourself a medium-format camera? If so, do you have any concerns?