Medium Format 645D finally ready?

[KeithT]

If I got one of them there cameras it would mean another computer upgrade/ memory and some serious harddrive capacity. Not to mention an upgrade to a pro monitor to do those files justice. File sizes from it would seriously dent my current storage devices. Nope, I will stick to full-frame and my upgrade to the 5dmk11 sometime this month.

[GeoffWessex]

Oh my goodness! I just downloaded the 'best' version of one of the test shots from here. Bearing in mind that it's a JPEG, (and therefore 8-bit and compressed to some degree) while the original would probably be a TIFF or PSD, you can now understand how glossy magazine portrait retouching is a piece of cake!

[Eyeayen]

OMG that is quite astounding, I'd be interested to see the same shoot done with a Medium Format and a Full Frame then posted side by side so we could see for ourselves first hand with downloadable files.

I've always wanted to have a go with one, are medium and large formats used as much as they used to be for advertising work ?

I know my friends who create digital art and lots of advertising pieces with 3D software are often commissioned to produce an image of whatever it required because a photo won't be perfect enough for final use. For 2 examples, flake chocolates are all bitty and bumpy if you examine them up close so the ones in the box are 3D digital illustrations and not real and then another advert had a shoelace printed on a bus stop ad, when I asked why it wasn't just photographed they said all the fibres and texture of the shoe lace would have looked awful at that size so it had to be a graphic, it was photoreal as were the chocolates. I know a lot of it that goes on because of the industry I work in as I'm sure a lot of you do but I'm also sure Joe Public just assumes and doesn't question. Therefore it must have lead to a drop off in studio's using the larger kit ? I don't know how much by though ?

[GeoffWessex]

I wouldn't like to say just how much, but a heck of a lot of advertising work (the product shot stuff) is done on the hugely expensive Hasselblad digital 'medium format' H4D50 and H4D60 cameras (50 and 60 Megapixels respectively and about $40,000 and upwards - body only). A local product-photographer and printer here in my city uses two - and then gets enthusiastic about getting a new light for the studio, casually mentioning that it cost over $6000!

I had a go at some touching up of that portrait in the sample pictures I linked to - you can edit pore by pore! Tiny little blemishes that we'd miss even if we were using FF cameras can be cleaned up - leaving an amazing skin tone.

[Eyeayen]

I guess it's one of those things about having the correct tools does make the job easier.