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Back in the early days of DSLRs, when full-frame sensors were rare and very expensive, I'd sometimes hear people refer to full-frame, only half-jokingly, as "digital medium format".

This is both accurate and inaccurate. Accurate in that some of the earliest full-frame DSLRs, the Canon EOS-1Ds series, were used for the sort of shooting that traditionally had been done with medium format film cameras: portraits, landscapes, studio work, that sort of thing.

When the EOS-1Ds Mark II came out in 2004, its 16MP full frame sensor inspired talk about "out-resolving" lenses. (This isn't a thing that happens, for what it's worth. What happens is you now have the resolution to notice flaws that would otherwise pass unseen.)

Inaccurate in that actual digital medium format had been around since nearly the dawn of digital photography, in the form of digital backs for existing medium format film camera systems, but those cost insane amounts of money and were almost never seen outside studios. Further, Mamiya released the first dedicated medium format DSLR in 2004, a 22MP beast with a price tag over ten grand.

It wasn't until Fuji launched their first medium format digital mirrorless camera in late 2017, the GFX 50S, that prices started to get more normal. Oh, sure, they still cost as much as a top-of-the-line pro body from Canon or Nikon, but at least it was used car money, not new car money.

Thing is, they've been on the market long enough now that the oldest ones are nearing Digital Fossils territory. Looking at MPB and Adorama, good used ones are fetching something like $1,500. That's a price where, if someone really wanted to try their hand at digital medium format, the cost is not prohibitive.

I'm kept away by reminding myself that I already have the 50MP Canon EOS 5DS that I hardly ever use.

But that doesn't stop me from kinda wanting to play with one.

Time Continues to Fly Like an Arrow...

When I first got into DSLRs over a dozen years ago, the D4 was still the king of Nikon Hill. It was still a year or so away from getting supplanted by the D4S (which, as the name implies, was a fairly modest improvement not worth incrementing the model designation over) and stickered for something like six grand.

Now you can pick up nice used ones in the $5-700 range, less if you're willing to go with a cosmetic beater or high shutter count. (And when looking at shutter counts on used cameras, be aware that the Kevlar/carbon fiber unit on the D4 was supposed to be good for 400,000 activations, and there are examples running around with a lot more. Pro Nikons are ridiculously overbuilt.)

This was Nikon's second generation of full-frame pro body and featured a 16MP CMOS sensor and a continuous frame rate of up to 10fps for action shooting. This one has one CF slot and one XQD slot, although other configurations were available.

These beasts were built for pros whose work would wind up on the pages of National Geographic or Sports Illustrated. (In fact, Nikon and Canon pro bodies tend to iterate on cycles that roughly coincide with the Summer or Winter Olympics.)

It's a bit of overkill for casual photography around the neighborhood, but hey, there's no kill like overkill, amirite?

Most of my shooting with this one's been done with the supremely versatile 28-300mm f/3.5-5.6G VR superzoom.

Fossilized!

When I bought the Canon EOS 5Ds as an open box item back in 2019, it was the most I'd paid for a camera to that date. I think it may still hold that title.

Yesterday I thought "Y'know, I haven't actually used the 5Ds in a while." Even though it’s one of my newest, nicest cameras and technically my main work camera, I hadn’t shot it since… [checks most recent picture on card] …Jesus, TacCon ‘24. 

 I fell hard down the Micro 4/3 hole for pretty much all of 2025.

Jeez, I don’t own a single interchangeable lens camera… or any camera, really …made in this decade.

The E-M1X and EOS R are my newest cameras, followed by the X-T2 and then the 5Ds, and I just realized that, having been introduced in 2015, the 5Ds is technically old enough for the ten-year cutoff of blog!.

DSLR Pics: Squirrels with the Sony a77

A sensible person would sell the a77 when she was done writing up the blog piece, but I really like a couple of the a-mount lenses and I am not very sensible.

Mirrorless Pics: Neighborhood people with the Fujifilm X-T2

The Fujifilm X-T2, despite being only a few months shy of a decade old, has a modern enough sensor that you don't need a screamingly fast aperture for it to be usable doing available light portraiture indoors.

The XF 16-80mm f/4 R WR OIS is plenty fast enough and has a big enough aperture to give some degree of subject-background separation.

DSLR Pics: Neighborhood people with the Sony a77

The Sony a77 isn't technically a DSLR. Unlike a single lens reflex camera, in which the mirror flips up out of the way to clear the light path to the shutter and sensor or film, the mirror in the a77 is a pellicle style mirror and fixed in place.

The pellicle mirror lets most of the light pass through to the sensor while reflecting some of it upward. Where the prism or mirror box would be on a normal SLR was a phase detection autofocus sensor. The viewfinder was electronic, like on a mirrorless camera. Mirrorless cameras of the time could only use contrast detection autofocus, which was much slower and more prone to focus hunting. 

Sony called these Single-Lens Translucent, or "SLT" cameras. Further developments in sensor tech rendered this obsolete in fairly short order. The SLT era at Sony was brief, with the first being launched in 2010 and the final model appearing in 2016.

This Can't Be a Fossil Already, Can It?

The "fossil" cutoff here at Digital Fossils is ten years old and, while it feels like the Nikon Df is still a fairly new camera, it was actually released in time for Christmas of 2013, so it's a dozen years old.

I wanted one but they were $2,750 for just the body when they came out. By early 2020 used ones had dropped down to a grand or so, but between inflation and the fact that they started getting desirable, the price kinda hovered right around that spot. In fact, nicer ones are back up in the $1100-1200 range last I checked.

Finally one with a low shutter count (under 12,000 actuations) and enough cosmetic wear to make the price bearable came out on the shelf at Used Photo Pro downtown, so... happy early birthday to me!

It's an interesting combination of parts bin stuff from the cheaper consumer full-frame Nikons, the 16MP FX sensor from the pro D4, and those retro controls. Thom Hogan's review I think does it justice.

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