"4. Leaf and its customers originally expected that the gray uniformity found in the Valeo 22 and the Leaf Aptus 22 would be preserved in the Leaf Aptus 75 and Leaf Aptus 65, despite the considerably smaller size of the pixel (52 sq mm. instead of 81 sq mm.). Gray uniformity is indeed preserved for regular retrofocal lenses where our competitors still suffer from non-uniformity. "
its somehow brave to name your competitors here...... because after my understanding your DALSA competitors have found solutions which LEAF is still searching .... let me tell you the background for my statement:
what suprises me is that there is exatcly NO statement to the centerfold issue.... of course it's offset is subtracted in the recommended gain calibration software as well as any color cast offsets,- but this helps only to a certain amount, after my understanding this is not the solution to get rid of this issue, if you have a sensor which shows the centefold issue. Many dalsa 33mp sensors do so,- raise up the gradation enough and there will be situations where you might see it ,- not only with shift lenses!
after my experience and after my tests with various backs ( e75 sinar ) this issue is system immanent and can be eliminated only by a clever software solution. in the last months i was involved very closely in the developement of the programm of the eMotion DNG converter by stephan hess,- central point of this software was - beside the conversion to dng - the elimination of the "centerfold" issue. one other of eMotionDngs features is the elimination of color casts nd vignetting by using a calibration shot,- something Leaf does with the separate gain adjuster tool.
although i want to point out that we improved the eMotionDng programm to a tool with a highly automated batch workflow,- which is by far the fastest tool i have seen untill now,- allowing to convert hundreds of e75 and e22 files to dng without beeing involved,- if the source folder once is structured accordingly.
another big step is that stephan wrote a highlight recovery which is very effective till up to 2 stops in the highlights, compared to the original sinar software ( which is comparable to the leaf software in this ). it allows a far more relaxt shooting, because you can take much less care regarding blown hilights. eMotionDNG does not cut the information, if at least one color channel still is under 255, and even makes an edjucated guess when all channels exceed 255 -
the problem being to avoid color casts in extreme cases., most, probably all other existing mf software goes the most simple way,- doing nothing or blowing all channels up to 255.
i just finished my last shooting. 22 weeks in bangkok,- shooting the new bangkok airport. i started with the sinar e22 and changed after may to the e75,- and asked stephan to help me to make the e75 usable,- which means to deliver absolute neutral files without centerfold issues, and with a fast workflow- i am using wide angle shift lenses from 28 - 90mm beside h-blad tele lenses with 150+250mm. very important for me was a fast and practical workkflow...... from file numbering, over batch whiteshot processing to combining shots and respective whiteshot automatically when batchconverting the files.. i am excited about the resulting image quality,- its such a great step from the starting point where we have been in May thats its hard to believe that the same back has produced this....
it seems so that our starting point in May is more or less the point where leaf currently is,- so i would say its truly brave to point out the state of your competitors in LEAFs post above.
finally SINAR took over the parts of the software from stephan which bring solutions to the various sensor problems the dalsa 75 brought with it...... and everything`s fine now so far,- at least with the e75.