Auto aficionados have an old saying: There’s no substitute for cubic inches. It means, simply, that more horsepower is always better. In photography, the same idea can be applied to the size of the film or electronic sensor you use to capture images. Just as medium-format film delivers sharper, smoother pictures than 35mm, interchangeable digital backs designed to work with medium-format film cameras produce higher-quality output than do digital SLRs with chips that are 35mm-sized or smaller, all else being equal. But there are other important considerations besides sheer image quality, and you as a photographer need to decide if digital backs are worth the extra cost and effort. Here’s a look at the pros and cons.

Digital Backs: The Pros

The most obvious advantage of a medium-format digital back is the sheer proportions of its image sensor, but this goes beyond pure resolution. Most models have sensors that are roughly the size of a 6×4.5cm film frame, twice the area of a full-frame 35mm-size chip (such as in the Canon EOS-1Ds Mark II) and four times that of the APS-C-sized sensors found in the majority of 35mm-style D-SLRs. This allows not only for more pixels overall but also bigger individual pixels. And these translate not only into higher resolution (larger files) but also wider dynamic range (the ability to capture more detail in both highlights and shadows) and lower noise (digital “grain”).

While 35mm-style D-SLRs now top out at close to 17 megapixels, the latest one-shot medium-format digital backs have reached a staggering 39 megapixels. That native resolution covers a huge print size of 23×30 inches at 240 pixels per inch, and with proper technique permits enlargement to double that and beyond. Such big prints may not be needed, but even at moderate sizes photographs can benefit from the ultrafine detail produced by these backs.

And what about those bigger pixels? With their help, a medium-format digital back records 16 bits of tonal information per color, compared to a 35mm-style D-SLR’s 12 or 14 bits. The difference is much bigger than it sounds. Those 16 bits translate into 65,536 levels of brightness, as opposed to 4,096 levels for 12-bit color. This produces greater tonal and color smoothness in photographs, especially valuable when a file will undergo extensive manipulation in post-processing.The third advantage of digital backs is that, as with their film-using cousins, you can swap them out. Since the digital back is a separate unit, a photographer may freely upgrade to a newer or better model but still use it on the camera with which he or she is familiar. And it’s also possible to switch the digital back with one that takes 120 or 220 rollfilm, either as a backup or because you want to shoot film for specific requirements and effects.

A related advantage is that a medium-format digital back can be used on just about any view camera. (You attach it with an adapter plate.) This allows you to employ tilts, swings, and shifts for perspective and sharpness control, often vital in product and architectural photography and useful for special effects. This capability also gives you access to the world of large-format optics, which includes lenses designed specifically for use with digital backs.

Digital Backs: The Cons

There’s a downside to medium-format digital, of course. The medium-format camera bodies and lenses that you need to begin with are expensive, and digital backs are very costly — in the range of $10,000 to $33,000. For many working pros, though, this is simply the cost of doing business (mitigated by financing, leasing, and/or depreciation) and is more than justified by the cash flow generated by the equipment. Whether you’re a full-time pro, an advanced amateur, or a fine-art photographer, medium-format digital can eventually pay for itself by eliminating the costs of film, processing, and high-end drum scans — often thousands of dollars a year.

While the size of digital backs and medium-format camera systems is what allows them to accommodate a larger image sensor, that size is also their Achilles’ heel. The whole rig is usually much bigger and heavier than a 35mm-style D-SLR. What’s more, the lenses tend to be slower for any given angle of view, and you have fewer to choose from. Wide angles are less wide, telephotos aren’t as long, and there are few, if any, less expensive third-party lenses to be had, as there are with 35mm-style D-SLRs. Medium-format cameras also lack the sophisticated metering and AF systems (if they have autofocus at all) of current D-SLRs.

Medium-format digital backs are also a lot slower than D-SLRs in their framing rate, typically just one frame-per-second versus anywhere from three to more than eight frames-per-second in D-SLRs. (This is mainly due to the extra data they must handle.) And they’re a lot more power hungry than D-SLRs, limiting the number of frames per battery charge.

The real clincher that dissuades many photographers from digital backs is that, depending on the model, you may need to shoot with a storage drive tethered to the camera. This adds size, weight, and some degree of awkwardness, slowing down your shooting process. And a final consideration is that the image sensors in most digital backs do not have the anti-aliasing filters found in D-SLRs. These filters lessen moiré patterns in linear details, and are a virtual necessity with the small sensors in most D-SLR models. But they accomplish this by softening fine detail, and that would defeat the purpose of a digital back. Though less prevalent, moiré patterns do turn up in some medium-format digital images. This means you may need to spend more time retouching, depending on the subject matter.

As more and more professional photographers switch to digital SLRs, the number of medium-format camera makers has dwindled dramatically. Bronica and Contax have shuttered their businesses; Mamiya recently sold its camera operations to another company. Rollei’s 6008-series cameras are attractive but incompatible with most digital backs. For the moment, Hasselblad is the primary medium-format player in the U.S.

Luckily, independent companies such as Phase One, Leaf, Eyelike, and Imacon (itself now part of Hasselblad) make digital backs for almost all major medium-format bodies produced during the past decade — even discontinued models. Most of these cameras were developed before digital capture became a reality, yet even a 50-year-old Hasselblad can be fitted with a state-of-the-art digital back. (Just do careful compatibility research before buying.)

Last year, despite its corporate changes, Mamiya started shipping the Mamiya ZD, a 22-megapixel digital SLR with a nonremovable back and me

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With the widespread adoption of digital cameras, professional photographers have come to rely on a variety of imaging programs for specific tasks. Beyond basic pixel editing in Photoshop, these include RAW file processing and conversion, image organizing and archiving, and printing. Wouldn’t it be less cumbersome if such functions were available in a single, integrated program? And wouldn’t it be even better if Photoshop’s copious features and capabilities were streamlined, reducing your need for books, videos, and workshops to master them?

That’s the thought behind Adobe Lightroom, an all-new pro-oriented program that Adobe recently released in a public beta version. Very different from industry mainstay Photoshop, Lightroom takes a completely fresh approach to image processing. It is user friendly yet comprehensive, with features including file import from memory cards and cameras, RAW conversion, image processing, slide shows, and printing, not to mention keywording, indexing, cataloguing, and archiving.

Don’t get too excited: Lightroom isn’t ready for prime time, and won’t be available for purchase until late 2006. So why did Adobe release the beta now? Because Apple’s conceptually similar Aperture software, released at the end of last year, beat it to market. (See our review in the March/April 2006 issue.)

Adobe’s clever but uncharacteristic move made a good thing out of a bad situation: The download site, found at labs.macromedia.com/technologies/lightroom, includes an online forum in which users can provide feedback on bugs and suggest other features they would like to see included. As a result, Lightroom will be a better product for photographers when it finally rolls out. Note that the original Lightroom beta is Mac-only but that a Windows version is coming; both will expire when the retail product arrives.

Even at this early stage of development, Lightroom is impressive. It’s more modest in its aims than Aperture, at least for now, and I find it a good deal easier to use. This simplicity is reflected in its basic structure of four separate Modules, each dedicated to a different imaging task yet instantly accessible within a single workspace. Switching modules requires a single mouse-click; this changes the view in the main image window, along with menus, control panels, and information displays. A strip-style image browser remains at the bottom of the screen at all times.

The first Module you’re likely to use in Lightroom is called Library, and it reflects the core of the program itself. Unlike Apple’s Aperture, which requires you to physically store your images within its own proprietary library database, Lightroom gives you a choice. You can import files into the Library itself, or you can have the program catalog them wherever they currently reside. This makes the database much smaller and allows you to store your images on internal or external hard drives.

Lightroom uses the concept of Shoots as named directories within the Library. A Shoot can contain files from a number of different places and times, on any drive attached to the computer. But files can also be placed into Collections — essentially ad-hoc groupings of files. When you import files into Lightroom, you can add your copyright information and keywords as IPTC metadata. Keywords automatically register in the program’s Keyword Search function, enabling you to find any files in the library containing those words with a single mouse click. You can designate these as a Collection, creating a new grouping of files. But the Collection is virtual — just a database entry. It takes up no additional disk space yet is instantly accessible.

Module number two, called Develop, is for adjusting and manipulating individual images. Unlike any other programs except Apple’s Aperture, Lightroom handles both RAW files and other formats — JPEG, TIFF, and Photoshop’s own PSD — in virtually the same way, using the same tools and adjustments. This transparent approach differs from the workflow in Photoshop, which requires you to first process and convert RAW files in Adobe Camera Raw. And since Lightroom’s RAW processing engine is based closely on Camera Raw itself, it supports the RAW formats of nearly all digital cameras ever produced. It also includes all the tools we’re used to seeing in Camera Raw, but organizes them better.

One of the Develop module’s biggest advantages is that it lets you adjust color, sharpness, white balance, and other settings without altering the original file. Most RAW processing programs provide this capability, since it’s intrinsic to the format, but only Lightroom and Aperture do so with other file types, including JPEG, TIFF, and PSD, in the same way as RAW. The program does so by creating a metadata instruction list (a “recipe” of settings) rather than altering actual pixels. This conveniently eliminates proliferation of multiple versions and saves space on your hard drive.

Develop adds some terrific features not available in Camera Raw. The Grayscale Mixer affords much more control over converting color images to monochrome, allowing you to individually adjust any or all of the six primary and secondary colors while preserving overall luminance values. Split Toning lets you apply separate tints to highlight and shadow areas in both black-and-white and color images. With the Presets Browser you can apply a variety of ready-made and custom settings to your photos. Also noteworthy is the Quick Develop feature, which offers a simplified set of adjustment tools for batch-processing multiple images.

Slideshow, the third Module in Lightroom, contains an array of tools for preparing and displaying on-screen presentations. A finished show can be saved as a PDF file (Adobe Acrobat format), a Flash animation, or a Web-ready HTML page. You can select a group of images for a slide show from a Shoot or Collection, or choose individual shots from the thumbnail picture browser.

The fourth module in Lightroom is Print, which easily surpasses the printing options found in most other general-purpose imaging programs. What’s special about the Print Module is that, unlike Photoshop, it’s designed to handle images in groups, not one at a time. To print a series of individual photos, all with the same page layout, simply add them to a Quick Collection (an ad-hoc grouping of files) and the pages will automatically queue up for printing. You can also print an entire Shoot or Collection (or any group of multiple shots) as contact sheets. Lightroom’s Template Browser gives you preset printing layouts for both single and multi-image pages, and you can create and save custom layouts of your own.

The Lightroom beta is very much a work in progress, and Adobe doesn’t know which features will ultimately be incorporated. But the final product is sure to reflect the opinions of photographers like you and me.

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