Experiments on Digital Medium Format

You no longer have to pay the price of a new car to get into digital medium format photography. Both first generation Fujifilm GFX and Hasselblad XCD camera bodies are at their lowest prices on the used market. For less than $2,000 you can buy a Fujifilm GFX 50s and for another couple hundred, a Hasselblad X1D. Both cameras still perform incredibly well in terms of image quality. We previously wrote about how digital medium format offers a cheat for faux X-Pan style photos, which saves you thousands versus purchases in the original X-Pan system. Well, we could not get enough of photographing in Fujifilm’s 65:24 aspect ratio or better known as “X-Pan Mode”. This aspect ratio is common with landscape work, however, there is a cinematic feel that comes with it that we tried replicating on a recent shoot.

Our experiment on digital medium format involved using our ND Throttle which is one of our specialty lens adapters that features a built-in variable neutral density filter. The filter inside provides two to eight stops of light reduction. Our setup was comprised of a Nikkor 20mm f/2.8 AI-s lens adapted to a Fujifilm GFX 50s camera using our ND Throttle.

There is no way to “turn off” the neutral density and the adapter at its minimum setting will offer two stops of light reduction. The reason for this combo was to get a cinematic wide shot look while also testing the limits of variable neutral density filters with a wide angle lens. If you did not know, using a focal length of 24mm or less with a traditional VND can cause an image artifact that shows up as a dark “X” across your frame. It is advised not to put a VND on wide angle lenses, however, we wanted to see if this occurs with a rear filter position versus the front.

The results from experiment taught us that rather than getting the dark “X” across frame, we got heavy irregular vignetting on the edge of the frame. This can easily be fixed in post but not something one should use for regular photographing.

Here are some images where the ND throttle adapter was set to its ‘MIN’ position for two stops of neutral density.

In these images, the lens was set to f/2.8 or f/8 depending on cloud coverage. If you notice the darker edges, then it was photographed in f/8. Please keep in mind that you are seeing the entire image circle that the 20mm can project. It covers about 90% of the sensor and the vignette you see is the physical edge of the image circle.

When the ND Throttle is set to the ‘MAX’ setting, you begin to see the image artifact we mentioned above. The only difference is rather than seeing a dark ‘X’, the edges are heavily darkened. The first image below was taken at absolute ‘MAX’ on the adapter while the following two were taken around the 6-stop mark on the adapter. Please note that these were long exposure photographs.

The sweet spot on the adapter for long exposures seemed to be on the middle point of the ND Throttle. This is around the four to five stop mark on the adapter as seen in the images below.

All in all, using this setup was simple a test to push the limits of wide angle lenses with our variable neutral density lens adapter. Using the ‘X-Pan Mode’ on the GFX helped eliminate more of the vignetting from the image circle which would of been cropped in post anyway. The main takeaway here is impressive coverage from the 20mm and we do believe that this setup has great potential for impressive cinematic long exposure photographs. On the next experiment, we will use the same aspect ratio but use a longer focal length to prevent this image artifact. The results will be in the edges!