No more Leaf products?

[bcooter]

Sorry, more thread drift: 
Out of curiosity, are the roadblocks to a Contax resurrection described somewhere?  Brand/IP tied up by someone unwilling to sell? Tooling destroyed?

It's a shame because Contax is gone and I have 4 of them nearly double of every lens made, except the 350mm.   I love the camera, but they're old and for some work in studio or in controlled lighting and movement ok.

Newer cameras have surpassed them.  The new Phase One and Hasselblad are just better, smoother and easier.   

Honestly if I was in the mood to buy into a new medium format system, I wouldn't care about sticking a $30,000 back on my contax. 

Theo,

Do you shoot "video", because if you do and you try to stream high bit rate 24 to 48fps out of a 645 sensor in 14 bit it takes a big camera or a big mechanical fan. 

Maybe someday someone will get there but it's not out there yet and RED has pretty deep pockets, Arri's must be deeper and both have incredible knowledge about cinema cameras.

When RED made a smaller camera it had a smaller than super 35mm (aps C) sensor.    The heat build up and processing power is really immense in high quality motion footage.

You can point to Fuji or Sony and say they do it, but in reality they don't.  The codec is highly compressed, the bit rate is 10 not 12 or 14 and the color spread is 1/2 the available colors (422) not all the colors, (444).

When Leica added video to their cmos camera they cropped into it.  Imagine cropping into a 100 mpx camera to get 4 or 6 k.  I'm not going to do the math, but come one, you probably talking a crop factor of 2 or 2.5 which makes a 50mm lens a medium telephoto.

Once again maybe it will happen, but I would bet that 90% of the people Medium format sells to couldn't care less about video from their cameras and if they did, another 6 grand will get them a decent result from a dedicated system.

Trust me on this.   Shooting a good parallel production of stills and motion footage is hard, not just with cameras, but lights, crew, power, time.

I have zero inside information, but I would bet the issues Phase One faces is they make high quality, long lasting professional equipment for a toss it in 12 months world.

I hope that's not true, but I'll bet it is.

IMO

BC

[Theodoros]

It's a shame because Contax is gone and I have 4 of them nearly double of every lens made, except the 350mm.   I love the camera, but they're old and for some work in studio or in controlled lighting and movement ok.

Newer cameras have surpassed them.  The new Phase One and Hasselblad are just better, smoother and easier.   

Honestly if I was in the mood to buy into a new medium format system, I wouldn't care about sticking a $30,000 back on my contax.

I have a similar Contax system as yours and use a Sinarback 54H and a Hasselblad CF-39MS on it... What I would like added, is mechanical mirror lock up (so that it would last the whole multishot sequence) & then a modern rechargeable battery...  nothing else... To me the camera is no more than a "black box"....

Theo,

Do you shoot "video", because if you do and you try to stream high bit rate 24 to 48fps out of a 645 sensor in 14 bit it takes a big camera or a big mechanical fan. 

Maybe someday someone will get there but it's not out there yet and RED has pretty deep pockets, Arri's must be deeper and both have incredible knowledge about cinema cameras.

When RED made a smaller camera it had a smaller than super 35mm (aps C) sensor.    The heat build up and processing power is really immense in high quality motion footage.

You can point to Fuji or Sony and say they do it, but in reality they don't.  The codec is highly compressed, the bit rate is 10 not 12 or 14 and the color spread is 1/2 the available colors (422) not all the colors, (444).

When Leica added video to their cmos camera they cropped into it.  Imagine cropping into a 100 mpx camera to get 4 or 6 k.  I'm not going to do the math, but come one, you probably talking a crop factor of 2 or 2.5 which makes a 50mm lens a medium telephoto.

Once again maybe it will happen, but I would bet that 90% of the people Medium format sells to couldn't care less about video from their cameras and if they did, another 6 grand will get them a decent result from a dedicated system.

Trust me on this.   Shooting a good parallel production of stills and motion footage is hard, not just with cameras, but lights, crew, power, time.

I have zero inside information, but I would bet the issues Phase One faces is they make high quality, long lasting professional equipment for a toss it in 12 months world.

I hope that's not true, but I'll bet it is.

IMO

BC

No, I don't use video myself, but I often work with people that do when there is documentaries made for ancient monuments and ancient Byzantine monasteries (for which I do the internal & external architectural and wall paintings part of the project)...

I know what is required for professional motion picture making though and have being working with people that use tilt/shift in their filming and even shared my experience on the matter with them...

IMO, the digital back, will make the "perfect" motion picture platform for the future... it will allow for use on a bellows camera, it will have big size sensors, it will be the most versatile as to use associated equipment with it...

Hasselblad has realized that and have been serioulsy working on the matter, Leica has realized that and made a start dedicated to Sinar bellows cameras, which no doubt will have a future... Alpa has realized that and thought "lets make a collaboration with Hasselblad as to use their backs on our platform", Horseman has realized that (with the TS pro) and even foreseen the future before all the rest... (perhaps ahead of their time). The sooner P1 will realize the same, the better for them too... Just my two cents (and opinion).... 

[bcooter]

snip
No, I don't use video myself, but

snip

Theo,

You are one stubborn guy.

Maybe this is what you are referring to:

https://www.cinema5d.com/medium-format-video-coming-external-footage-phase-one-xf-iq3/

But take a moment before you just comment and read between the lines.  None of these "announcements" talk about the real world.

Bit rate...not mega bits but mega bites per second, not real bit depth, not the crop factor.   I think the leica is 2.5 or down to super 35mm, which in reality is smaller than aps c.

I know you don't like Phase one . . . heck we all know that, but  they can't turn a medium format camera into a motion picture machine.

It just doesn't happen and if it could as I posted before look at the size of an Arri, or for that matter hold an epic in your hand for 12 hours. 

They're big, heavy and serve a purpose, but they are for motion, not still files.


IMO

BC

P.S.  I hate camera discussions, but this time Theo,  I think your wrong.

In fact the move is to film

http://nofilmschool.com/2016/09/should-you-shoot-16mm 

for that special look, not 65mm digital which holds very little more than the standard offerings.

Check this movie out, by not old but young film makers.  Off the scale and they always shoot film on a panavision 35mm camera.  http://www.midnightspecialmovie.com/

[Theodoros]

Theo,

You are one stubborn guy.

I just can't understand your attitude... You have your opinion, I have mine... Who's been proved correct up to now? I don't "like P1" has nothing to do with P1 as a company... MO is that "they don't do things" ...they have a policy of providing DSLR alternatives (and ask to much money on top) up to now... That's why my suggestions... (IMO)

[Frederic_H]

I think that they've added the Leaf look to the IQ backs further indicates that there will be no new Leaf products and no Credo 100. The Leaf users can now simply move to IQ series and still have the look they prefer. I see no other business reason for Phase One to add Leaf looks to the IQ other than making it easier for Leaf users to take the jump.

Leaf ICC profiles had a different format than Phase One profiles, as the original Leaf Capture software had a different color pipeline. If I remember correctly, with Leaf the raw data is first converted via a matrix profile (embedded in the raw) to ProPhoto primaries and then the ICC profile is applied, while Phase One applies it directly to the raw data. That alternative pipeline was integrated to Capture One and used only for Leaf backs, that way they could use the original Leaf profiles. I wonder if they in this case have reformatted the Leaf look into the traditional Phase One ICC format, or if they still use the "Leaf Capture color pipeline" for those. If they have reformatted them there could theoretically still be some minor look differences.

An additional source to look difference is white balance presets (if used). The exact tint of "Daylight", "Flash" etc presets can differ quite much between manufacturers. For example if you're a landscape photographer used to shooting with Leaf's daylight preset that may or may not be kept in the IQ back so you may or may not get the same tint (I don't know how they've done regarding that).

The Leaf "ProPhotoRGB" profile changes very little from the base matrix conversion in the color pipeline, I guess that's why it's called "Prophoto". It's also the least subjective profile, and ironically it seems to be very popular. And sure if you know your post-processing it's nice to start off with something neutral.

I've had a look at those "LF5" profiles, and they look like they are based on the LF4 ones (Credo 50 - CMOS). Some ICC header fields are different though, I suspect one of them act as a switch so that part of the Leaf processing pipeline is bypassed. That would mean the dozen of Credo 50 profiles could easily be made available to IQ CMOS users.

Regarding Leaf future, I find it odd P1 labeled those 2 new profiles following Leaf convention (Aptus II -> LF2 ; Credo CCD -> LF3 ; Leaf 50MP CMOS -> LF4 ; LF5 -> ?? ). Actually it's making me optimistic about some new Leaf products...

On a side note, the IQ3-100MP profiles are really way, way better than the defaults ones for my IQ260. Once adjusted for saturation and contrast they provide a much cleaner and neutral basis, in line with calibration results from dcamprof or basiccolor.
Attached is a simple comparison to show you how blatant the differences are. The crop is from a pic taken with the IQ260, developed using the different profiles. Where P1 support didn't see any issue with the yellowness of the stock profiles, I do see a real problem here 

[torger]

Interesting comparison! Do you think that there still is a need for further Leaf products, or is it okay just providing the "Leaf look" this way to IQ product range?

I'm also not a big fan of the yellow look, but on the other hand I get emails now and then from Capture One users that think DCamProf's profiles aren't yellow enough (they can be made yellow if one like though)... so it's a thing of taste

I've had a look at those "LF5" profiles, and they look like they are based on the LF4 ones (Credo 50 - CMOS). Some ICC header fields are different though, I suspect one of them act as a switch so that part of the Leaf processing pipeline is bypassed. That would mean the dozen of Credo 50 profiles could easily be made available to IQ CMOS users.

Regarding Leaf future, I find it odd P1 labeled those 2 new profiles following Leaf convention (Aptus II -> LF2 ; Credo CCD -> LF3 ; Leaf 50MP CMOS -> LF4 ; LF5 -> ?? ). Actually it's making me optimistic about some new Leaf products...

On a side note, the IQ3-100MP profiles are really way, way better than the defaults ones for my IQ260. Once adjusted for saturation and contrast they provide a much cleaner and neutral basis, in line with calibration results from dcamprof or basiccolor.
Attached is a simple comparison to show you how blatant the differences are. The crop is from a pic taken with the IQ260, developed using the different profiles. Where P1 support didn't see any issue with the yellowness of the stock profiles, I do see a real problem here