>>3851960>I think the special sauce is that you can use a longer lens while being closer to your subject.Nope.
This argument comes up a lot, but it rests on the assumption that a longer lens will intrinsically give you a different perspective. I.e., on the fallacy that an 80mm lens on a system where 80mm is a normal will still give you the same portrait perspective as 80mm on full-frame/35mm will.
In fact, perspective is all about camera-to-subject distance, so if you stand in the same spot with a 35mm camera and 50mm lens and a 6x7 camera and 100mm lens, you'll get roughly the same perspective.
I've been thinking about it a lot, though, and there *are* some contenders I've thought of that could legitimately be the "special sauce" you get shooting with MF:
1. Different aspect ratio. You don't notice how narrow 2:3 is until you try cropping it to 6:7. Even if a 100mm on 6x7 and a 50mm on FF are equivalent focal lengths based on pure math, the 6x7 aspect ratio will make you take another step back to get your subject in frame, and that'll give you a slightly different perspective. Even more so with 6x6 square format.
2. Depth of field. Not that it's shallower per se, but that it can get really shallow without the same loss of sharpness that you get in smaller formats. And you're more likely to shoot at something like f/3.5 on 6x7 than you are to shoot at (roughly equivalent) f/1.75 on 35mm, which means narrow DoF shots are a bit more common on medium format.
3. Waist-level viewfinders on a lot of MF cameras cause you to frame from a lower angle than you otherwise would with an eye-level finder.
4. Overall improved sharpness/tonality/etc as I detailed in
>>3847815So, try this to replicate the MF look with a smaller format:
a. Take an extra step back. And another, to give your subject more space around them after the crop in part d below.
b. Shoot at f/1.8.
c. Bend over so you're shooting from waist level
d. Crop to 6:7 aspect ratio
