As someone who has been working with large resolution medium format cameras for more than a decade and has used the GFX 100 (and each update to it) since 2019, I can say that your slow hard drives are a massive part of your computer woes, not the computer itself. I have several OWC Thunderbay enclosures and a few of them running in RAID configurations to make them faster. But the reality is that none of the HDD (rotating disk drives) in any configuration are fast enough to really work with these big files efficiently. I would suggest getting a wicked fast SSD drive (~2800 MB/s or faster) and using those to work up the images and then transfer them over to your Thunderbay enclosure once you have worked up everything. That will make everything run faster. Also, if you are running through RAM memory, make sure your computers working hard drive has plenty of empty space as filling up the computers hard drive can really slow down a computer, since all of its scratch disk space is being used up.

I enjoy how you explain the way you compose your shots. I'm not a landscape photographer, (I photograph classic and exotic cars) but I get some ideas that expand my creativity. Thanks! And please keep these videos coming.

Currently debating getting this camera and your videos have been very helpful. Thank you!

Well said. I think this is an often overlooked aspect of upgrading to higher megapixel cameras…definitely relatable. Thank you for sharing

It's been fun watching your GFX journey Todd. I switched over to Fuji and the GFX 100S last year also, and am still astounded by the images it produces. While I cannot quantify that “Medium Format” difference either and it is no doubt a combination of factors, coming from what I always felt was a surgical, clinical almost sterile quality to the files from my Sony camera’s (having given up on Canon a decade earlier) it just felt like the Fuji GFX files have heart. I now also have a X-H2 for lighter travel, and while I do enjoy it it cannot touch the magic of the GFX. On a side note the GF100 - 200mm is definitely the weakest of the GF lineup. It’s not a bad lens per se but it just can’t seem to resolve for the 102Mpix sensor. The magic you describe for the 200% or 400% zooms is just not there. The new GF20 - 35mm lens is a different story though, it is an astounding lens! Oh, and I think 64GB of RAM is the (new) baseline when you'e shooting with 102Mpix 🙂

Your Color Grade is amazing. wonderful ....

What you win on the swings you lose on the roundabouts. Thank for making us aware of some of the hidden workflow costs when using a medium format digital camera.

Another good video Todd.

Great video, Todd. I switched over to the GFX 100 in 2019 and have been using the 100S since it came out. I'm running a Mac Studio with the M1 Ultra chip, and 128GB of RAM. I import my images to the SSD in the Mac for processing in Lightroom Classic and Photoshop (if needed) and then move the files to an OWC ThunderBay Flex 8 once I no longer need the speed of the primary SSD. I haven't done any controlled tests to time the difference in processing speed between using the SSD in the Mac versus processing images off the ThunderBay, but it is significantly faster with them on the Mac. I often have Lightroom Classic, Photoshop, and Helicon Focus open at the same time. Have you considered going with the GF 20-35mm f/4 and GF 45-100mm f/4 as a landscape kit? They pair well and leave only a small gap between 35mm and 45mm.

I regularly work on panorama files consisting of many 50 megapixel images. Once these go to photoshop and layers start piling up, I’m working with 10 Gigabyte files. I’ve solved the problem with an overclocked 12700K with single core running up to 5.4Ghz, 64GB of low latency DDR5 and a Samsung 980 Pro. No lag, no freezing and work gets done without frustration. I own, love and use many Apple products but photo processing is not great so I built my own PC to fix the issue.

Hi Todd, very helpful info. May I ask how you find its low light performance in terms of noise and dynamic range? I am think blue hour images. Same for high ISO images? How clean are the RAW files? Would be great to see some examples if possible? Really enjoyed all your videos and images from your recent trip to Utah, Arizona etc. Guessing you used the Provia profile for most of those images? Many thanks.

I’ve seen some photos from the Fuji GFX cameras and they look great. Having 16 bit for the images makes things look fantastic. Subject separation, dynamic range, these are great on these cameras. While you mentioned the external storage, I’m curious about internal storage. Are you processing the files from the internal drive or the external storage? If you plan on getting more memory, you are going to need a new machine as Apple doesn’t offer a service on the new M series machines for memory upgrades after the fact. For long term use, bite the bullet and get an Ultra with the memory you will need and maybe a 2 TB internal drive. You can’t upgrade the CPU/GPU, memory or SSD after purchase but you, can use external SSD to expand the space which will be faster than hard drives. Depending on how many files you are importing and processing from each shoot, you might want to consider an external SSD, a USB4/TB4 enclosure with a 2TB ( or more if you need) drive to work from, then store the finished work on the hard drives. This is an option a lot of people choose if you don’t want to pay for the internal SSD upgrade, sadly the same cannot be done for memory or the CPU/GPU.

OWC sold me ram for my iMac. In my 53 days in Alaska, from the Homer Spit to Deadhorse, Prudhoe Bay where we dipped our toes in the Arctic Ocean, in July, in a snow squall I returned with 25,000 Raws on my 100s and about 5000 on my 50r plus 1500 or so on my XH1. After adding more RAM to my 2021 27” iMac I had no more slowness and/or crashing when merging images in LR and PS

Thank you, that makes me appreciate my Sony A7R3 even more, with my Win driven PC.

Briliant! Love it!!! I am sharing this with all those that I have been warnig not to fall wictim to the socia media “bigger is better” clickbait narrative. I am just very surprised that you did. I myself got the GFX 50II s and it is right at the egde of too much already. The files coming from it are absolutelly epic. Yes, I have been shooting many formats in 35 years as a hobby photographer and yes, there is a medium format look and feel that you can’t get from full frame or smalles sensors (I shoot all four formats since if used correctly, have advantages over the others). What is true is that this does not guarantee a good picture, only your skill does. The “excuse” that this 102mpx. sensor allows you to crop images is a very weak one at best. The medium format look comes becuase of the sensor/negative and lens size and NOT from the amount of pixels. When you crop you are esentially draging an oversize fullframe or APS-C camera with you. Kind of defeats defeats the purpose… My only recomnedation is that before frustration sets in you “downgrade” to the 52mpx sensor and avoid croping that goes beyond correcting slightly. You won’t need to get another Mac, more memory and you will be in a better place.

Great video, again. I thinking about getting a Hasselblad X2D and thought I could have the same problems you are having. Another unforeseen expense. What Mac Studio configuration are you thinking about?

@dominey hey! quick question which filter did u use for this video in particular mist 1/2 or 1/4 black satin?

I found that going from 32gb ram to 128gb was well worth it. It just removed a lot of hiccups that I was facing. Nice video :)

I shoot 5 stop HDR with my 100S and I've got a lowly i7 processor laptop with an rtx 2060 card and 16gb of ddr4 ram. It takes me 3-4 minutes for Lightroom to spit out a preview composite for the HDR and then another 2-3 minutes to create it. I've been planning to upgrade to a new Mac so 45 seconds sounds like a dream come true to me lol. This was a very very very useful and relevant video for me so thank you for making it.

The 100-200 was my most used lens besides my30mm on my 53 days in Alaska. Loooove my 100-200

Thanks for this from someone who also shoots the GFX100s as well as the R5. The 100s is the only digital camera that I can say is similar to shooting medium-format film, which I did professionally for decades and still do. It's a finicky camera, sensitive, not great for low light or strobe - but to me it's an amazing camera that works beautifully for natural light shots. For people that don't understand/see the difference between 35mm and medium-format, they won't appreciate the difference between something like shooting an R5 compared to this camera. It's juicier, richer, creamier...what comes straight out of the camera needs work for sure, but it doesn't make you want to cry like when you see raw files from your smaller cameras. Yes, the drive/storage issue is no joke. :(

the files on that 100s in portrait work are amazing to work with in photoshop.

Hello Todd, I had the GFX 50s a few years ago and compared the results with the Canon R5, Lumix S1R and Nikon Z7. All cameras gave very good similar results with top lenses. I thought I saw the medium format look in the Fuji at first, but the Lumix S1R files also had a similar punch and a certain plasticity and depth in Capture One. Finally, I went back from Fuji GFX and X to full frame and now use Nikon Z and a Sony alpha. Where the GFX 50s files have an advantage that I see in Lightroom (I'm back to Lightroom from C1) is in extreme edits with masks where you pull the sky down a lot or darken it with the blue channel, for example. Here the GFX files show significantly less Tonal value breaks than my full frame cameras and I think that the GFX 100s with 16bit is even better here. That's why I thought about using the GFX 100s again, but didn't because of the immense hardware requirements on the Mac (I only have an M1 with 16GB RAM), because I would have had to invest a lot more.

I have an M1 MAX with 64GB memory. My daughter has the same with 32 GB memory. Makes a big difference for some tasks, but not most. HDR merge is one of the the asks where it makes a difference. Surprisingly, not so much focus stacking. A 100mm lens on the GFX 100s cropped to 4K is equivalent to a 303mm FOV. I only shoot 60 megapixel Sony images, and regularly use a 100-400mm lens.

I don’t know about LR, but round-tripping in C1 gives the option of choosing resolution. With that camera I’d be tempted to open at 50% - I.e. quarter the file size. And of course you can trash your redundant exposures once merged to HDR. My only experience with mf digital is my aging Phase One p21+, and you’re quite right, there’s something more immersive about the larger sensor. Great photos btw.

Hi Todd, quick question if I may Do you always convert files to dng when importing to Lightroom? Thanks Caula

I feel you Todd. I don’t own one but regularly edit 100s files. They are gorgeous but huge. That said, with the amount of dynamic range they have it’s rare that an HDR merge is necessary. More to the point, I have to flatten files when compositing but even then when I have a few adjustment layers with masks, it gets to PSB pretty fast. I don’t know what it is about that format that makes it take SO much longer to save than a tiff. I suspect that process is not optimized for multi-threading… for what it’s worth. I have been working on a M1 max MacBook Pro is 64 gigs of ram and it’s plenty. Prior to that editing these shots on my 2015 iMac with 24 gigs of ram was rough though… 😅

5:00 How would there be larger separation between foreground and background when all of these small medium format cameras have significantly deeper depth of field than full frame cameras? (the widest prime lens on fuji which is new gets to equivalent f1.4 or was it f1.2 DoF)?

Yes, the files are hard on the computer. My files are 200MB each. Since I build PC's I built my pc to handle these massive files. I have a 4090 Graphics card and 128GB ram with the latest CPU. So I have no issues. I could not imagine processing these files on any less of a computer. I guess it is what I signed up for. I will do a video on this exact issue and shout you out on my GFX Camera User KZfaq Channel. Thanks for taking the time to produce this video. It is an issue I seldom hear discussed. Great job!

I watched your Video about Premiere and the QT LUTs. Very well explained and the colors and grading of this video where stunning. This Video here and other Videos you posted are kind of washed out, the gradation seems flat. Is this on purpose or did you "forgot" to use the LUT?

I was having the same issues using a z7ii and dxo pure raw which made my panos absolutely massive in file size. Even with 64GB memory, Lightroom and photoshop hog around 53GB but it has solved the lag and swap usage upgrading ‘cough’ buying a new machine! I would like to see the M3 ultra come with 256GB RAM in the studio but also I wonder how a PC with a Ryzen 7900 and 192 DDR5 would do which can be had for around the same price as the m2 pro mini base model. 😅

Great images. Have you printed out the files? I bet fantastic. And yes. Huge files. I usually shoot Canon R5 but was at an ad agency's studio last week and they had bought 3 GFX 100 bodies. The full time assistant there had the Fuji set up and I used it instead of my Canon. I loved how the files looked. Agree with you. There is some sort of clarity provided by these files compared to Canon. In a way similar to how I like the Phase One back / Hasselblad compared to Canon. But of course you don't need to shoot these large files to hit the storage space wall. Recently I had a job where we shot for 5 days with multiple setups per day (on the Canon R5) and I processed them out as 16bit for retouch and with that I had to use multiple 1 or 2T SSD for backup.

As a Mac Studio user I’m curious, when you are editing and compositing your images are you working off the Thunder Bay hard disc array? Would your editing performance improve if your images were on the internal Mac ssd? If you don’t have enough room on your internal drive you might try an external ssd and then use the thunder bay for storage only, not as a working drive.

I shoot with Canon R5 but compressed RAW. Files are large still, but with very similar quality to RAW.

Have you looked into having a separate SSD disk only for program cache? I use a 500-1TB SSD for cache when using Premiere Pro, Photoshop, AfterEffects etc, and it has been an eye opener. The programs that I can set to store cache on a different drive, are more snappier and less taxing on my Macbook Pro M2 pro

Hello Todd, I guess I know the answer but I prefer to ask. When you use the crop in camera, the resulting pictures is a jpeg or tiff, isn't it?. I figure out not a raw image Thanks

Before talking about something special about medium format, i would suggest taking the same shots on a FF and on a medium format. Why would you do an HDR merge? There should ne more than enough DR on the Fuji. I never do this on my R5.

Have you turned on GPU acceleration in LR?

I totally feel you r pain mate , i was lucky enough to buy a 16: macbook to edit on in 2019 the last intel chip , everything top spec only 1 tb storage as plenty after dying trying to edit with a 13" macbook from 2012 was hours to render a video this new one only takes 20 30 mins . but now its become like the little mac before it it cant handle stitched panos in Lightroom and bogs down full fan constantly with dji mini video. the crazy thing is it cost me $6500 aud in 2019 which is crazy money now to upgrade to m3 max same storage same maxed level is $9999 aud just cant afford it . hopefully if breaks as im covered for insurance and only way i can get a new m chip version. can only imagine trying to do those big fuji files with this.

Also, mate I use a GFX 50 and I use the MacBook M1. There’s a couple of apps that you can do to clean up your computer 💻 Gone back and deleted a lot of my old images that I have no use for only keep the keypad and this will also clean up your computer as well. I’m a pretty experienced landscape photographer I don’t have a bacon KZfaq channel or even a website. I do know what I’m doing and there are ways around it but definitely in the jump from 50s ii

I had the same issue when I went to the Leica Q3. You have to go with a M3 Max. You’ll see a massive difference. I went from M1 Pro to M3 Max and it was worth it. Now is the wrong time to buy the M2 Ultra as the M3 Ultra will be out soon if you want a desktop only.

I stopped fantasizing about anything bigger when I found how much room my X-t5 files take up. I do a lot more deleting of off-exposures than I used to.

Todd, have you considered using Capture One & Affinity Photo instead? Chances are you would not run into the same bottlenecks with them? I also highly recommend you (temporarily) move your working files over to the internal SSD while doing your heavy liftings on them.

I have the same setup as you except I use SSD drives and have no problem at all.

5:16 I love this picture!

man the offset on this video is something else with the white shadows

I use a macpro but put in 128Gb RAM. It helps but it still takes time to read images from the external drive and it kills your buffer especially with focus stavks

Photoshop is still mostly single-threaded (for an individual image) - in order to get the best processing “experience” my recommendation is to go with a COU that has the highest performance in that area. For me that meant going with the Ryzen 9 7950x (a year ago). A couple of month later the latest Intel chip would have been 10% faster (same as the best Apple chip then). All those cores are good for something like Bridge, though. My previous computer already had been at 64 GB (for those pano stitchings), but I opted to go for 10 Gbe for faster file saving to network storage. all-in-all close to being the fastest, mostest, what the consumer line currently has to offer. I don’t like being being held back by equipment- let it be camera gear or computer lab gear.

Old photography school taught that medium format is in between small format and large format, defining the end of small and beginning of large. The best, simplest, most practical definition for small we used was, "if it fits on 127 film then it is small format". That film had 36mm usable width and was 40 mm wide. It has the same paper backing with a strip of film taped to it that you'll find in 60mm wide 120 film and equally wide 620 that had a different spool (the 127 spool was like a smaller 620 spool). This makes almost all "medium format" cameras of today really "small format". Only the big Hasselblad and Phase ONE would really qualify as medium format. IMO Fuji went here because they can never compete in the 35mm (i.e. 36mm*24mm frame) domain. That said, the cameras are fine and so are the lenses. But they offer bad economies of scale and you need to carry a lot more weight. Not to mention more powerful computers. If you really want to compare images from a lower than, say, 60MP 35mm camera to that of the 102MP Fuji, then you need to find the best raw processing for each and run the result through Topaz's Gigapixel AI to convert both to 32,000 pixels on the long side. Depending on your subject, this has the best detail retrieval. If you want to compare gradation, take your shots from Adobe Camera Raw (ACR - does the raw processing in Lightroom Classic (LrC) as well as Photoshop (Ps) ), potentially through LrC, into Ps and convert to 32 bits. Even on a lousy 8 bits per channel monitor with sRGB colour space you likely see an improvement. With AI Denoise added into ACR, Adobe tried to fix its lag with Topaz and DxO who already had solved the problem years before. But the detail retrieval or prevention of loss of detail is not optimal yet, in ACR. In another YT channel someone called the two shots "raw" from different cameras, looking at them in LrC. The number of subscribers and views have nothing to do with validity and relevance.

What I do is transfer to a fast SSD for actively working on files, and just use HDDs for archival only.

Actually one of the reasons I look into medium format is to expose myself to the resource struggle. It kind of brings back a thinking approach from the film photography, is it?

I don't have any problems with CaptureOne and GFX files, but with cameras over 50 MP it makes sense to sort out the data even more strictly when importing or, even better, to keep your finger straight more often when taking photos and not to record every piece of crap…

Why do you convert them all to dng?

I'm a gamer on PC, I have no issues with the GFX 100s files uncompressed raw. I use a RTX 3070 graphic card with a i7 11th generation. I have 32 GB ram. By the way your photographs are not flat because you are a talented photographer. But for my personal projects, I prefer to use 4x5 in films and large format camera. I use the GFX for travels and portraits. The 80mm f/1.7 is soooo sharp and close to film photography. And for landscapes I use the 23mm

I have worked with 150 Megapixel files from a PhaseOne lately on my M1 Max 64GB Macbook Pro. The experience was not very fast but rather fluid. I could have used more RAM but it is completely doable. 32GB RAM is not that much though. If I were to buy a Mac studio I would definitely go for 64-128 GB RAM and an Ultra version. Nevertheless - if you work with large PSB files in Photoshop and the saving takes very long I would advise you to turn on "Disable compression of PSD and PSB files" (PS on Mac: Preferences/File Handling). The files will get significantly larger (3-5x) but they will save very quickly to your working SSD. If you are finished working on them and you are ready for archiving - turn off the above setting and the files will be compressed (and smaller) again. This will speed up your workflow significantly. If you don't want to go to preferences all the time you can install a 2nd version of PS (one from a year earlier) and set those settings to enable compression so you just use it to save the files.

Hi I’m using the Studio with Ultra chip and 64GB RAM Hasselblad X2D 100, Fujifilm GFH 100s and Canon R5C files both for photos and videos are running smoothly, and yes, RAM is important when using Adobe LR and PS! Thanks for the video👍

My first camera was the Olympus 2500 with a whopping 2.5megapixels. Yup, 2.5.

I am a Sony A7R1V user. While 61mp is not 101, it gets "like" your GFX100s when building panoramas or HDRs. And I am having the same problem on my Intel Windows 11 PC. Even before watching this video, I was firmly convinced it was poor memory management in the new releases of Lightroom and Photoshop. I assume you too are using the latest and greatest. Now, I am almost certain it is poor memory management somewhere, either Adobe or Microsoft. So I'm just going to bite the bullet and upgrade my PC from 32gb to 128gb and hope that solves the problem. The real reason I even watched this video is I expect to receive a GFX100S next week. I'll install the new PC memory about the same time and hope the performance problems don't continue with either the Fuji or Sony raw files. Thanks for a great KZfaq!

I find that the dynamic range on this camera is so good that I don't need to do HDR. It does challenge the memory. I am using 32 Gb on a pc. I can upgrade to 64 very cost effectively. As with any technology, there are always going to be growing pains and consequences.

I have the 50Sii, and 50 megapixels is about as large as I’d wanna go, this on my M2 Pro MacBook Pro anyway. What I want is the 100’s phase detect AF… not the file sizes.

I've been happily using my D700s for years. I print a lot, but only up to A3+ max and find anything over 12 MP is lost in the printing process. Small, easily worked files!

Great Video Todd, a great review of using the GFX 100 the good the bad and the ugly, thanks for sharing

Old photography school taught that our (human) perception of sharpness (resolution) follows linear lines. That's why we have a unit like "LinePairs per millimetre" (LP/mm) to measure resolution. As MP are an area unit, MP do not predict our perception of gains in resolution or sharpness, but they perfectly predict the impact on required processing power. If you want to linearly double the sensor resolution a camera with a sensor of X*Y=MP, you get 2X*2Y=4MP. This means that 100MP is twice as good as 25MP. CETERIS PARIBUS. Note, for example in the case of Nikon, that a 24MP camera has an OLPF and a 45MP camera does not have that. The OLPF was introduced into the Bayer paradigm as a hardware help to raw processing (wild-assed guessing of missing colours - mathematically precise and repeatable but wild-assed guessing no less). The concept already was applied in the 1970s by developers of the Scanning Tunneling Electron Microscope (STEM) - times when image processing would have been extremely expensive. The OLPF does a controlled diffraction of light that travelled through the colour filter over photocell (photosite) [x,y] so a fraction of the light hits the direct neighbours. This makes raw processing easier, but you loose low light sensitivity, dynamic range (DR), contrast envelope (DR available in a single image), colour space, and contour sharpness of your lens. And you gain significant vignetting. Nikon ELIMINATED the OLPF in the D800E version of the D800 more than 10 years ago. But Adobe only recently offered AI Denoise in Camera Raw (ACR) s a tool to repair failed raw processing that could not handle images from cameras without OLPF. AFAIK Canon sticks to the OLPF up to rather high resolutions. The noise we may see in darker image zones and especially blurred zones must generally be attributed to failed raw processing, not the sensor, not the camera.

Great video and beautiful images! Realistically 32gb is a small amount of ram. 16 was the standard for student laptops like 7 years ago and 32 was a decent amount for more professional systems some years ago. 32gb is the base today. I appreciate in apple land this is tricky as the ram and storage pricing they do is insane, and you can never upgrade. It's sad. That's why I'm going for a a more poorly specced macbook now coupled with a windows desktop system I'll put together. I'm going small form factor so I'll have a max option of 98 GB of ram but it's amazing how cheap it is honestly. That and Intel CPU's have media engines built in that are the best in the world, super impressive.

Fujifilm loaned me the first GFX100 to shoot with. The 200MB raw files destroyed my computer. I have 64GB RAM but my workflow required blending 15-30 layers in photoshop PS. The brush tool was completely unresponsive. Took me a long time to get through the edit 😮

wait... apple has light sides? I'm thinking I should get the 50s II instead but I'd rather wait for a hardware upgrade even if I have the money for it and a bigger storage device

I would love to see a 50MP modern backlit sensor with the new processors in a GFX. Think about how much faster and responsive than the 100. They are still releasing 24MP full frame cameras for the same reasons.

In my opinion, so much resolution is not necessary for the work you do. I think that a camera with 45 megapixels is more than enough. When you buy cameras with these characteristics you have to plan the editing equipment as well. If you are going to use, for example, Lightroom, Photoshop, Premiere Pro, After Effects and some other editing programs and video plugins, you need a minimum RAM of 64 and, from RAM with 64 GB, you choose the other components for the computer. The components must be compatible with each other and not form a bottleneck. It seems that you have not well planned the means and financial investment for cameras of this type, including the Canon R5. 👍👍

Before you dump the 100-200mm consider just the opposite. Adding the 1.4x TC works extremely well with that lens and gives you more telephoto reach to pick out detail shots at locations like Bryce Canyon. The downside is that the cost of the TC is over $800 USD! At that price it should work well…

It's fascinating... My biggest print on the wall was created from an 8 megapixel photo and really none of my visitors ever noticed. My biggest camera can produce 98 megapixels by sensor shifting. But I really don't understand the point behind it, other than pixel peeping and (very massive) cropping.The effort involved in processing power is no longer at the core of photography for me. Although I do use a powerful PC, with 64GB Ram.

I find that I agree with some of the other opinions expressed here. I have 64 Gb RAM and haven't had problems yet but I am also just getting into editing my photos/videos now. Having said that, I ditched Apple a long time ago simply because they seem to believe that forcing a monopolistic environment surrounding their business is the key to success. So now I am a windows and android person. I also build my own computers and that makes it easier. The new processors available now are simply unbelievable in speed and efficiency. Also, what's even faster yet are the new m.2 SSD's. Try the Samsung Pros like the new 990- you can get a 2 Tb 990 pro for

When using LR to merge hdr files how about this: create Smart previews, then unplug your external hard drives to do all editing and merging/composites. Once done you can plug in your external drives and hey-presto you have high quality files but takes a fraction of the time to process because you process the SMART previews. Let me know what you think?

With such HQ imagine files comes the storage issues etc…I’d love to have your problem 😃

In photoshop turn off the compression for the .psb it makes it much more faster

Using large files is the Bain of the Grand Format output provider. Like it or not you simply must make a study of your hardware/software and maximize not only your configuration but your understanding of how the process affects you. I've been image editing for nearly 3 decades and use Windows as building servers and upgrading storage capacity is fast and less expensive per performance. I only use SSD's for my workstation, never under 64GB of RAM, I work locally and backup across the network. I've found that the PSD/PSB file formats interesting as well as Adobe softwares handling of any larger file content. The worst problem is the file limitations themselves, if the RIP is not a true 32 or 64 bit s outward you can hit a wall quickly.

The more I watch about MF, the more I fall in love with it.

this camera makes sense if you are printing large. for a 4k timeline youtube video you need 8Mb not 100

I bought a brand new, heavily discounted P900 Lenovo workstation a couple of years back, with two Xeon Silver CPUs and 128GB or RAM. I added an Nvidia 30something with 12GB VRAM later as well. It still outperforms basically EVERYTHING that Apple sells today and it does so at a fraction of the price. And I can upgrade/modify it any way I want. Need more fast disk space? No problem, I put in another disk. No more disk connections available? No problem, I add another disk controller. I edit my 50MP 5DsR files on that machine, plus video, plus all my software engineering work I do for a living, plus I can run some of the LLM models locally on my machine to play with AI. I have a MacBook Pro too, the last Intel based model with 32GB RAM. I enjoy that machine, but the Intel PC just smokes anything else, especially at the price point I paid.

Agreed. Slow hard drives should be replaced with solid state drives. Minimum of 32GB RAM.

i tend to like the aspect ratio of full frame however

Compression follows from geometry - distance and the "square law" - not focal length, not image angle. Image angle is only your in-camera crop. But, longer focal length has shallower Depth of Field (DoF) in theory - DoF depends on the Circle of Confusion (CoC) blended parameter by a lot and for example your sensor resolution and lens resolution are part of that CoC parameter (and this is blended with processing quality, display resolution, display size, and viewer to display distance). The square law of perspective simply says that the area in frame has the square of the increase in distance. Flash exposure inverts this as basis for light intensity per area. So your higher res camera has shallower depth of field with the same lens than a camera with less resolution. Which makes any DoF scale or calculator that does not take your CoC into account very unreliable. Especially when you print large or display on large monitors that can be watched from a short distance. And, as art school will teach you, may have taught you, the illusion of distance is not just created by making things smaller but also by making them a bit less detailed (aka sharp). So it's possible that a form of compression is perceived by humans because of DoF placed in a way that makes the background (beyond foreground and midground) less sharp.

That amount of RAM usage seems a bit high. That could be operating system related. Maybe a reinstall would help. CPU usage is usually the bottleneck. I work with large format scans topping 150 megapixels with 32gb RAM on a pc. RAM is never an issue.

Maybe is Lightroom slowing down your computer. I have the same camera and computer but use Camera Raw and Photoshop without a problem. I even use Davinci Resolve at the same time and no problem. I’ve heard that Lightroom is sluggish.

You answered your own question. Looks like you should sell the current Mac Studio and upgrade to a Mac Studio with more memory. Best thing for now is to be on the lookout for a M1 Ultra Studio with 64gb/128gb ram as they are best deal and is still faster than a M2 Max Studio.

Great video as always. I wish they would implement a feature where you could downscale to 50 megapixels, as I often think the files are way to big. I wrote to Fuji a while back, and they said they don't have that in mind any time soon - too bad :(

As Fuji GFX 100s owner who also owns an Apple Studio M2 Ultra with 128GB combined memory... I can tell you that the the extra expense of the computer upgrade is 100% worth it (especially if you're thinking of"future-proofing" your setup for the remainder of the decade)

Compression is the same for the same FOV.

I knew it immediately... a Mac user not having enough power to crunch photos. Personally I would just use a PC with Linux or Windows and spend the extra money on lenses. Lightroom was a very slow program in general back when I used it.

There actually isn’t any difference in compression. Compression is caused by being far away and shrinking the foreground, which creates the impression that you’ve made the bg bigger.

This probably reinforces the argument that medium format cameras should stay inside the studio, tethered to a Solid State drive. Just my amateur take. Leave medium format to the studio pros. For me, the one sensor size to rule them all is still (Fuji) APS-C.

Fun fact: Lens compression isn't an effect of a lens, but FOV. If you crop the image it will look the same as if you used a zoom lens in the field.

Why don't you use the Capture One? I think it's better in some things than Lightroom. PS: I've bought a high end laptop for this. Gigabyte AERO 15 with 32Gb RAM, but most importantly the fastest SSD on the market only for the work. I burned one in 2 years of use, so keep that in mind.

You're a Professional, any upgrades is a deductible expense and you can depreciate over 3 years.

I am hoping with the advent of global shutter, we may see a lower mega pixel GFX body within the next 5 years.

These issues you've pointed out are the reasons I moved away from Apple desktops and built my own PC. Which gives me a little more future upgradability and is a little lighter on the pocketbook. I used to be a big Mac fanboy, but when I started working with bigger images, I had better experience with Windows/PCs. The specs and charts all say the Mac should be good enough, but real world experience tells me other wise. Apple SOC is pretty awesome, and I think they have really pushed the CPU industry into making more efficient processors, but the other CPU and GPU manufactures leap frog Apple pretty quickly.

Unfortunately RAM (Memory) in Apple computers has never been upgradable aside from the 27" iMac or the Mac Pro. Both of these were Intel and very outdated in terms of computers by now. The new MacBook Pro's that were just announced with the M3 Chip top out at 128GB Memory but at that configuration you will need to sell a kidney first.

👍🏼✅

are you editing on a potato?

Others commented on “telephoto vs wide angle crops not being the same”. The position of the camera in relation to the subject is what dictates “compression”. Crop the portion of a shot taken with a 20mm lens and compare it to the same area taken by a 400mm lens and you will see the identical image. The issue is if you like télé views, you will get more resolution if using tele lenses.

Its the 16bit that makes the magic . I use a MacBook Pro M1 eats my 100s files like a champ