A reader noticed that my recent Death Valley photographs were made with two different systems — a Canon full frame system and a Fujifilm APS-C system. Apparently some people DO look at the EXIF data! ;-)
He wrote:
“Hi Dan, I’ve been enjoying your recent posts and comps from your Jan visit to DV. After visiting your flickr site, I noticed that you use a Canon 5DSR with 100-400 telephoto lens for its reach across the terrain, and a Fuji XT-5 with a medium telephoto for the more intimate canyon shots. Is that your set up for convenience depending on the scene? I’m guessing the 5DSR is tripod mounted for shots, and the Fuji is handheld when hiking. I’m curious why you don’t pair the Canon with the same focal lens that you use on the Fuji. Thanks for your insights.“
For example, this photograph was made with the little Fujifilm XT5 rather than with my much larger Canon system. If you are interested in my answer, read on!
With his permission, I’m going to write a bit about why I use two systems, and how and when I use both of them together.
But first, let me be clear that I don’t think everyone needs to rush out and buy a second camera system! Most people are going to be fine with one, and there are advantages to keeping things simple. You don’t have to learn two sets of interfaces, you don’t have to carry as much stuff, and the costs are obviously going to be lower.
My Two Systems
For the past 20 years or so my primary system has been a Canon DSLR of one sort or another. Early on it was a cropped sensor model, but I moved to full-frame when the 5D was introduced. After that I had a 5DII and then the 5DsR that I use now. I pair the camera with a set of EF L zoom lenses covering 16mm to 400mm (longer with a teleconverter) plus a few specialized lenses — a 100mm f/2.8 macro and a Pentax medium format zoom paired with a Mirex tilt/shift adapter. With only a few exceptions I photograph from a (large!) tripod with this setup.
This gear is optimized for my landscape photography, but it also works well for tripod-based night photography and — believe it or not — for wildlife photography. But it is big, bulky, and heavy. If I load up everything in my pack , I’m carrying well over 20 pounds of gear.
About a decade ago I added a second, smaller system. Until that time I had been doing urban photography with a full frame camera… and resenting the amount of gear I had to take. The initial impetus was some overseas travel where I wanted to limit gear weight and bulk, and on which I would mostly be doing “travel” and “street” photography. I started with the tiny Fujifilm XE1 and a couple of small primes, using this to try out the Fujifilm system. I soon realized that it was a much better system for my travel and street photography, and before long I moved to the XPro2 and built out the set of lenses I use. Initially that meant adding a few more primes — some of them very small and light and a few larger lenses with big apertures. (The latter are useful for my night street photography.) One thing led to another, and eventually I added a macro lens and a couple of zoom lenses — not for travel or street photography, but so that I could use the smaller system for other things, including some backcountry photography.
In many cases I select one system and leave the other behind. Shooting street? I just use the Fujifilm system. Shooting landscapes and seascapes? I may go with just the Canon. (Though keep reading, since that’s not quite the full story.)
Which system is best?
There’s a lot of passion among photographers to own The Very Best System. Often the assumption is that the biggest system is the best. In fact, if all else is equal (hint: all else never is equal), the system with the larger sensor has image quality advantages. And for many people, the only criterion seems to be pure image quality, so they assume that the bigger sensor system is “better.” (Oddly, this is true for a lot of photographers who never make a large print or even print at all, but I digress…)
By that standard, the larger full-frame system is the ‘best” one, right? In fact, when weight and bulk are not a big issue, when working from the tripod, and when photographing certain kinds of subjects in certain ways, I feel that the full-frame system is often the best choice.
You probably notice that I’m being vague about this though. I’m not coming right out and repeating the usual mantra: “Full frame is better than cropped formats.” Why?
While the image quality potential of the larger system is better, that’s not the whole story when it comes to selecting gear that makes the best photographs. “Best” image quality is not the only measure for “better-ness.”
Practical issues are high on the list of things that matter. If I carried my complete full-frame system into the streets of Florence I think that my photography would suffer. (My back would, too, but that’s a different issue.) The big system is optimized for a different kind of photography, and the smaller system usually lets me be a more effective photographer in urban environments where I’m thinking as a street photographer. It also makes me a bit less of a distraction. People respond one way to some photographer with a giant bag of gear, a tripod, and a big camera with a huge zoom lens. The respond quite differently to a photographer with a small camera with a small prime lens. With the latter gear I have less of an impact on the behavior of my subjects and I can work with greater freedom.
But what about the image quality? I’ve stipulated that it cannot equal what I get from a tripod-based, full-frame system. That’s bad, right? Well, not really and maybe not at all. While the larger format can be very good, the smaller format is also quite good. I’m completely confident in its ability to produce excellent quality 20″ x 30″ prints, and even larger in some cases.
What About Using the Two Systems Together?
This takes us right back to the message from my reader about using two systems, or at least to an unstated underlying question: What thinking informs my decision to sometimes carry both systems?
There’s a lot to think about here, since there’s not just one answer to this.
He noted that I had made some Death Valley landscape photographs with the Canon system and some with the Fujifilm. He guessed correctly that I mostly used the Canon on the tripod and the Fujifilm off the tripod on this trip. On this trip I used the Canon system when the weight and bulk wasn’t an issue and when I planned to work from the tripod. However, there were times when I hiked into some semi-remote areas, exploring some lonely canyons and similar, and I wanted to cover some serious distance. On those forays I left the full frame system behind and carried the Fujifilm system with a couple of zoom lenses, and I photographed handheld instead of using a tripod. So here the choice was a practical one.
There’s one other important value to bringing two systems. Going to distant places to photograph entails considerable investment of time, effort, and finances. Having dealt with gear failures a few times in the field, it is worth it to me to have a backup. With only one system, I might find myself out of luck if there was a mechanical failure — photography trip over! But with the redundancy of two system I would be able to keep working. Let’s say I had a mechanical failure on the Canon system — I’d just keep working with the Fujifilm system. While the IQ potential might be a bit lower, it would still be quite good and I’m sure I could bring back worthwhile work.
Sometimes I actually photograph with the two systems “side-by-side.” For example, when photographing wildlife I might have the long lens on the Canon system, spot an interesting landscape subject, and quickly put the Fujifilm camera on a tripod to photograph it. That’s a lot quicker than swapping lenses on the Canon, putting it on the tripod, changing all of the camera settings from those appropriate for wildlife to those appropriate for landscapes… and then reversing the whole process!
The writer also noted that I don’t exactly duplicate the functionality of the two systems. For example, he wondered why I don’t have equivalent lenses on both systems. I suppose that if I could duplicate the entire setup, and that I might sometimes use all of those lenses. But since I’m going to generally use the 100-400 that I have on the larger system, the need for duplicate functionality in this case is probably not great enough to get the extra lens.
What Should You Do?
You very definitely should not rush out and get two systems just because I or someone else does this. If you do decide that you need multiple systems — for backup, for different kinds of photography, for convenience — my particular gear choices might not be ideal for you. There are plenty of alternative options that may be a better fit… including just using a single system.
While I’m sharing the thinking behind my choices, I fully recognize that others with different priorities will come to different conclusions.
If the system backup is your highest priority, there’s a good chance that you may want a camera body that uses the same lenses as your primary camera. One strategy is to keep your old body the next time you update to a new model. Sure, the new one is better… but the old one is better than having no camera at all!
Perhaps, like me, you want two systems so that you can optimize for different kinds of photography. For example, some photographers get a APS-C system for wildlife photography and a full frame or miniMF system for landscape. One friend of mine uses the very small micro-four-thirds gear for his second system. Another friend who has worked his way down from 4×5 sheet film to digital medium format occasionally uses a smaller system — a full frame camera! Some people like to pair a large interchangeable lens camera with a more pocketable all-in-one camera with a built in lens.
Whatever you do, I urge you to do it because you identify a real photographic need — not because owning multiple systems seems cool. Trust me, if you don’t have a use for them, it isn’t cool — it is just more stuff to carry, and you are likely to end up ignoring one of the systems.
I hope this is useful to some readers. And, as always, I welcome your comments and questions.
G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” is available from Heyday Books, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.
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You mentioned on person who used a large answer medium format system on occasion. Have you considered medim format as a secondary option. For me it tends to be too busy for hiking but I enjoy it occasionally. Please share your thoughts on that.
Hi Todd,
That’s a good question. I have considered a miniMF system since I first saw the Pentax 645z well over a decade ago. I have also carefully tracked the arrival and subsequent development of the very interesting Fujifilm GFX system.
In short, I’ve been intrigued. Which perhaps raises the question, “Why have you not moved to miniMF?”
The main reason has to do with what and how I photograph. In order to move to the larger format, I would have to be convinced that a) there would be a significant photographic advantage and b) the move would not unduly limit my ability to photograph in ways that characterize my approach. In essence, the plus of better potential image quality would need to be more significant than any potential practical minuses that I’d have to adapt to.
My approach to landscape photography is basically built around using a full frame system with high-quality zoom lenses covering the focal length range from 16mm to 400mm, with the option to add a 1.4x TC to go a bit longer than that. My dominant use of the system is for landscape photography, though I also photograph some wildlife, especially migratory birds. I need to able to make high-quality large prints, at least up to the capabilities of my 44″ printer and sometimes even larger. (I’ve licensed work considerably larger than what I can print in-house.)
As to the potential quality plus of the larger format, it is real. A 100MP 33×44 sensor can produce files that have objective advantages over the 50MP full frame files I currently work with. However, a real question is “How much better?” With my existing gear I can make an excellent 30″ x 40″ print, and a quite good print at even somewhat larger sizes. So when we compare what the miniMF system can do by comparison to the FF system, rather than being a comparison between mediocre and outstanding we end up with a comparison between something like outstanding and a little more outstanding.
If everything else were equal, the would be enough to push me over the line. But, as you know I’m about the explain, everything else is not equal. ;-)
The biggest issue for me is lenses. Lenses that cover the same (or even close to the same) angle-of-view range are simply not available for the Fujifil GFX system that I would get. The longest system lenses are an excellent 100-200mm zoom and a fine 250mm prime, both of which can be extended a bit with a 1.4x TC. Leaving aside the fact that I don’t want to revert to a prime for my long lens, neither gets me close to the reach I get from my 100-400 without the TC, much less with it. If Fujifilm did offer a 200-400mm zoom, there’s a pretty good chance that I would buy into the system, but they don’t and so far there is no indication that they will.
There are some other issues to be aware of as well. The GFX system is slower than a DSLR (even my somewhat dated 5DsR) and certainly slower than current high-end full-frame mirrorless cameras. I don’t always need that speed, but sometimes I do. The GFX AF, while excellent for many purposes, also does not equal the performance of FF systems. That said, I could still look past those issues, particularly for landscape photography, if the lenses I need existed.
Beyond that, I’d still want the much smaller x-trans APS-C system for my second system. Keep in mind that this is my primary setup for street and travel photography, so I’d be looking at a two-system approach that still used APS-C but shifted the Big Camera from full frame to miniMF. I’ve thought about that, particularly in light of the likelihood that I’d be moving my wildlife photography from the full frame system to the APS-C system… which I could certainly see doing.
So, lots of words! But that’s what happens when you ask me to share my thoughts! ;-)
Dan