Medium-Format Digital Cameras: The Shapes of Things to Come
Medium-Format Digital Cameras: The Shapes of Things to Come
Aug 12 2007 11:40AM | Permalink | Email this | Comments (0) |
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EDN.com, MA
Personally, I never got into medium-format film photography. That’s probably because I never became skilled enough to exhaust the possibilities of my Canon SLRs. Even with my Canon 20D dSLR (digital single-lens reflex) camera, I’ve got a long ways to go before I can say I’ve mastered the medium. I probably never will. So I’m unlikely to buy Mamiya 645ZD digital medium-format camera, even though it’s priced a whole dollar under $10,000, but that doesn’t mean I can’t drool over the camera or extract some pointers of things to come for lesser cameras. (If you already happen to own a Mamiya 645, you can buy the digital back alone for $1 less than $7000.)
Mamiya’s large-format digital camera back sports a 22-Mpixel image sensor. That’s 30% more pixels than you get with a top-of-the-line, 16.7-Mpixel Canon EOS 1Ds Mark II full-frame dSLR for about 25% more money. It’s also a bit less than twice the number of pixels for three times the money when compared to the full-frame Canon 5D dSLR.
More important to me, however, is the difference in bit depth. The Mamiya captures 14 bits/pixel while nearly all lesser-format dSLRs capture 12 bits/pixel. Those extra two bits of pixel depth are a very big deal to me. I consider them more important that the extra resolution, for the types of images I try to capture. Really high-end digital camera backs capture 16 bits/pixel. I think bit depth is the next great battleground for digital cameras.
The Mamiya 645ZD’s features bode well for digital cameras in general and drive another yet nail or three into film’s coffin.
Add comment August 13th, 2007