Leaf Aptus 75

Brawny medium-format back with a window to its soul.

Most of the attention in the digital photography world seems focused on the breakneck developments in the 35mm-sized SLR market. But the real advances (at least in sheer megapixel count) are coming instead in the medium-format back arena.

Case-in-point is the recently released Leaf Aptus 75, a nearly 34-megapixel back that produces a 200 mb 16-bit file. The lower-resolution Leaf Aptus 65 (announced in conjunction with the 75), meanwhile, turns out a file of about 160 mb from a 28-megapixel sensor.

It's remarkable how quickly medium-format backs have ramped up their sensor size-we had just completed our review of the Leaf Aptus 22 (the predecessor to the 75) the same day that the Aptus 75 was announced. In 12 months the company had overhauled their backs, with the more powerful body jumping from 22 megapixels to the current 34.

Not only did Leaf increase the sensor size, but it also brought a handful of other improvements to the (already excellent) Aptus. Our hands-on testing of the body resulted in excellent images and very solid performance, with just a few quirks.

The new features only build on the Aptus's already strong feature set, which includes the ability to write images to a portable hard drive pack, an LCD screen for image review and camera control and software that's easier to use than most bundled programs.

A CHAIN IS ONLY AS STRONG

One of the greatest strengths of a medium-format camera back is also its greatest weakness: the ability to connect with any number of medium format cameras (which allows photographers to choose between digital and film). This versatility gives the medium-format back great flexibility-it's possible to use the same back on several cameras in a studio-but also makes it difficult to evaluate the unit apart from the camera to which it is connected. Our earlier Aptus 22 review unit, for example, was attached to a Mamiya 645 body, a leaner that had some issues with its focus screen.

For this review, we tested the back with a Hasselblad H2D, a body that didn't suffer any of the focusing problems from our earlier test. And unlike earlier H1Ds we tested, it didn't have any problems with communication with...