I had a Aptus 75 demo Yesterday and the leaf rep told me that the ZD will not be important because M.A.C who imports Mamiya in the States feel that the ZD is not ready...too slow and image quality isn't good enough
I use both the ZD and Aptus 22 and really like both of them. The Aptus 22 is better but we have to put things in reality like money. The Aptus 22 ($25000) and the ZD ($11000). The Aptus has better software (MAC) than the ZD ( MAC & PC). I have compared the Aptus vrs the ZD ( RAW processed file) at iso 50, result Aptus slightly better. The beauty is that they are a very similar file ( same Dalsa chip ). I could drag on here but........ the price of the ZD is $14000.00 less! Anyone watch TOP GEAR that great car show, when they compare cars( that is what this is like). On editorial shoots I have learned to deal with the buffer with the ZD and the screen issue is not really an issue for me. Having used other digital cameras and backs.For example the ZD blows the Kodax 645 DPS out of the water period!!
Thanks Denis
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=76042\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Image quality has a lot to do with how a manufacturer sets up their camera and the software (firmware and raw file decoding software) that runs it. A good example of that is the Kodak dslrs, and not just the last flawed models.
Kodak designed their cameras so they underexposed by up to 2 stops; they made a big play on how highlight detail could be recovered in Photodesk - great news for wedding pros. It all worked well enough, but it created the impression of a noisy camera, because "normal" exposures were in fact underexposed leading to shadow noise. Once you uderstood this and compensated for it (seriously exposing to the right), the noise problem was greatly reduced or eliminated (I recall there is a report on the Kodak SLR/n or 14n chip noise characterisitcs on this site somewhere that shows the chip is not inherently noisy).
Mamiya are relative newcomers to digital imaging and I think this shows in the software. Kodak greatly improved the performance of their dslrs through their life, and while the ZD is already very good at low ISO, I wonder if similar improvements could be made. SilkyPix is already way better that PhotoStudio at decoding raw files, if you tweak the settings.
Quentin