Moving from medium-format film to digital for portraiture

Portrait photographers around the world love Fujifilm medium-format mirrorless cameras for the high-resolution stills they create. Traditionally, medium-format film cameras have been the gold standard for portraits—but now, even veteran film photographers are moving to digital. And the 50-megapixel Fujifilm GFX 50S and 100-megapixel Fujifilm GFX 100 are two of the very best.

Simon Murphy is the winner of the 2019 Portrait of Britain Award and the 2019 Richard Coward Scottish Portrait Award in Photography and has captured the portraits of high-profile individuals from the Dalai Lama to Noel Gallagher. Simon Murphy has published in Portrait of Humanity and the British Journal of Photography, and is chairperson of the MPB Scottish Portrait Award in Photography.

For the past twenty years, Simon has been using a medium-format film camera to create Govanhill, a project photographing the inhabitants of the residential district of Glasgow, Scotland.

In this video, Simon Murphy tries out a Fujifilm medium-format digital setup—the Fujifilm GFX 100 and Fujifilm GFX 50S, with the Fujifilm GF 35-70mm f/4.5-5.6 WR, GF 50mm f/3.5 R LM WR and GF 80mm f/1.7 R WRlenses—and shares his advice for creating award-winning portrait photography. Watch the video below or read on to take a closer look at Simon’s images.

Portraiture is the area of photography that excites me the most. It's a chance to look directly into someone's eyes and wonder what they've seen, what life has been like for them. Strong portraiture triggers questions and gives an opportunity to expand your personal understanding of the world we live in.

Photography changed my life. It became a chance to cross borders, to visit new places, to experience culture and to meet fascinating people. Over the years, I've met so many interesting people—photographing actors and musicians, artists and even world leaders—and that really excited me. 

But I found that even just photographing the everyday person offered that opportunity to open horizons. I found that the place where I lived for many many years—there was so much culture there on my doorstep. So, that's when I started to just turn my camera lens towards what surrounded me. And this is when the project Govanhill began.

I actually started the project around 20 years ago, when I was at college, but I picked it up more recently because I wasn't travelling as much with work. Govanhill is a small area in the south side of Glasgow, Scotland. It's a very diverse, multicultural area. I've had so much joy from photographing in countries all around the world that to turn my lens to this area again—where I actually found a lot of that diversity right there on my doorstep—has been really exciting.

The project is a portrait of a place that is very dear to me. It consists mainly of street portraiture, chance meetings with people that I might pass in the street and see something in them that I respond to. And then I ask if I can make a portrait of them.

I think portraiture gives you a chance to look into someone else's lives, look straight into their eyes and consider perhaps what their life is like. Maybe ask questions. A strong portrait for me is one where it leaves you with questions, leaves you with something to think about and perhaps expands your own understanding of this world that we live in.

For much of my work, I photograph on a medium-format film camera. The Govanhill project, I started 20 years ago, so it just felt right to continue in the same way. I'm a bit of a creature of habit. So when I start a project in a certain way, with a certain process, I tend to continue on in that way. There are a lot of things I like about the medium-format camera. One of the main things, apart from the quality of the image that you get from it, is just the ability to be separate from the camera. The camera is not over my eye, so I can have direct communication with the subject as I photograph.

But recently, I’ve been thinking about a new project. And, when I think about a new project, I think about the whole process—which includes the camera. Which camera should I choose to photograph on? I have been looking to explore colour photography just a little bit more. And I’m really impressed with the quality of images from medium-format digital cameras. 

So, when I got the Fujifilm GFX 100, I took it straight out of the box and immediately I hit the streets. I had no idea how to use it, no idea at all. I didn't even know how to change the ISO on it, because I'm used to shooting medium-format film cameras. I thought “well, all I really need is to change the aperture and the shutter speed”. But I did need to set the ISO! I found it pretty quickly after that, and I thought let's just give it a go. So, that's what I did.

The camera feels quite old-school, in a sense. There doesn't seem like too many functions, on the face of it, and that’s good. When I'm working with a medium-format camera, it's aperture and shutter—that's it. So, it's not overly complex.

Even though the lighting conditions might be nice and bright where I can get fast shutter speeds, often I shoot with the tripod for a portrait because it's more for me about the interaction between the subject and myself. I like to be able to speak to whoever is there, rather than being hidden behind the camera. 

I think sometimes the camera's a bit of a barrier. So that's why I use the tripod. But the little screen on the Fujifilm camera,  so you can just pop it out and see what I'm seeing.

As chair of the MPB Scottish Portrait Award in Photography, I've managed to bring in some fantastic judges like Margaret Mitchell, GarconJon [Jonathan Daniel Pryce] and Albert Watson. We're going to be looking at portraiture and I’m so excited to see the variety and the amount of portraits that come in. People often ask me “what makes a strong portrait?”. It's a really difficult question to answer.

Sometimes, you can look at the technical aspects of a portrait. There's something about the way it's been constructed that just looks incredible and feels right. Sometimes it's a pin-sharp photograph with beautiful lighting.

But there are other times when a portrait might be out of focus, and have a bit of motion blur in it, but it just captures energy and emotion that touches and opens up perhaps more of a story. And so, for me, there are no rules when it comes to what makes a great portrait. 

But it's really important that the portrait connects with the photographer. It should make them feel something, something strong—whether it’s a profound moment, a serious moment or a moment of joy—that the photographer has been involved in and has been able to capture on their camera.

For me, that's the starting point. Do you feel something when you've made that photograph? How does it make other people feel? When you show that image to others do they remember the image? Does it provoke some kind of response in them? Can you see that the in the viewer's face?

Photography isn't just about the photographer, it's about the subject—and it's also about the person that's viewing that image. How does it make you feel?

Looking for more articles about Fujifilm medium-format portraiture? Read Del Francis’ Fujifilm GFX 50S review, check out our review of the Fujifilm GFX 100S, or discover more camera gear guides on the MPB content hub.