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f (R) gravity is one of the simplest viable modifications to General Relativity: it passes local astrophysical tests, predicts both the early-time cosmic inflation and the late-time cosmic acceleration, and describes dark matter. In this paper, we probe cosmic magnification on large scales in f (R) gravity, using the well-known Hu-Sawicki model as an example. Our results indicate that at redshifts |$z \, {\lt }\, 3$|⁠ , values of the model exponent |$n \, {\gt }\, 1$| lead to inconsistent behaviour in the evolution of the scalar perturbations. Moreover, when relativistic effects are taken into account in the large-scale analysis, our results show that as z increases, large-scale changes in the cosmic magnification angular power spectrum owing to integral values of n tend to share a similar pattern, while those of decimal values tend to share another. This feature could be searched for in the experimental data, as a potential 'smoking gun' for the given class of gravity models. Furthermore, we found that at |$z \, {=}\, 1$| and lower, relativistic effects lead to a suppression of the cosmic magnification on large scales in f (R) gravity, relative to the concordance model; whereas, at |$z \, {\gt }\, 1$|⁠ , relativistic effects lead to a relative boost of the cosmic magnification. In general, relativistic effects enhance the potential of the cosmic magnification as a cosmological probe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]