LEAF APTUS 54S

[perbernal]

I´m seriously thinking of upgrading to a Leaf Aptus 54S digital back. I have been researching the internet thoroughly + talking to rental houses, reps and sales people in order to get as much information as possible and have a pending deal on a refurbished unit. Would really like to have the inside scope from an end users perspective  in order to cover as many angles as possible besides renting a unit myself. This is what I have found out so far about the 54S:

* Fastest back at the moment
* 25-400 ISO (How does it look at 100 & 200?)
* Software not perfect for batching (planning to process in CS3 though)
* Tethered works good with new 11.1 software

My biggest concern is the workflow;

How´s the back to shoot with on a Hasselblad H-camera?
Do you prefer to shoot tethered or onto CF cards?
How is it to work with a laptop on location with or without a battery powered back-up system/generator?
Hows the capture speed in real time?
Is it a stable system?

Most importantly, i[attachment=6899:attachment]n post processing, can I expect the files to be as easy to handle as the ones produced by Canon 1DS MARK III´s when it comes to rendering Jpegs, processing & color correcting raw files etc.?

I would really appreciate your input in regards of this system. Nothing is to small or big. Planning to make a move sometimes this week depending of your experience + my own.  Thanks a lot for your time.

Best, Per Bernal

[SecondFocus]

Per,

For some reason I thought you were already shooting MFDB. But anyway I have not used the 54s but have used the Leaf 65. I have shot both tethered and to a card. Some quick notes...

Post processing is not much different than Canon files, except I thought they looked a lot better to begin with, especially in skin tones. At the time I was processing in Aperture and outputting into PhotoShop of course.

My own problem shooting tethered was pilot error, me not being familiar with the software. That was in a studio on a G4 Powerbook, AC power. Shooting to the card was flawless.

Higher iso's were not great, 100 is good, 200 is good but not as good.

Capture speed was fine with me, about the same as your studio strobes anyway.

For the next few days I am shooting with a Phase P45+ for my next comparison. I will say that those files put my main computer to the test. 223 mb tiffs in CS3 are taxing on my dual 2.7 G5 with 8 gigs RAM.

Anyway I know we talk to the same people at MAC and Leaf but I could also refer you to my pro rep at the dealer I use who might be able to help you out. Send me an e-mail to SecondFocus@mac.com if you want the info etc.

[BJNY]

Just finished two days (1000+ captures per day) in studio with A75S/H1.
No hiccups whatsoever.
Rock-solid tethered to a Mac Pro.
Kept pace with Pro7a 2400 at 1/4 power.

[James R Russell]

Just finished two days (1000+ captures per day) in studio with A75S/H1.
No hiccups whatsoever.
Rock-solid tethered to a Mac Pro.
Kept pace with Pro7a 2400 at 1/4 power.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=200066\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Did you shoot to seperate folders, rename any files?, name any files?, background process during the shoot?

Were the files shot compressed or non compressed and how much post time to decompress them?

Now adjust (including exposure?) and process those 2,000 images and tell us the news.

JR

[STEVE K]

James, are you saying the leaf sofware is not up to par on processing the items you mentioned. What where your experiences?

[BJNY]

Shot uncompressed to separate folders (100-300 captures each).

Locked in color balance and curve at beginning of each folder
(back and forth between daylight and studio set-ups).

Renaming wasn't necessary, but Renamer4Mac would have done instantly.

As you know James, I'm not a fanboy of any brand.
I don't own any equipment, and use whatever suits the project.
I have and still suffer through some software's bugs and un-intuitiveness.

[Esben]

-No problem, normally up to 700 files a folder (not that everything goes nuts after 700, but we usually get a new outfit or change scene).
-No problem, rename files in Bridge while shooting.
-No problem, batch process in PS3 while shooting.

LC11 is the fastest "fast jpg" RAW processors that I work with.
Photoshop deliver the fastest TIFF and high-res jpg.
Our Aptus 54S shoot 76 fpm. tethered to mbp or macpro without hitting the buffer at anytime, beating both the Canon and any Phase One by far.

Best,
Esben

[James R Russell]

Shot uncompressed to separate folders (100-300 captures each).

Locked in color balance and curve at beginning of each folder
(back and forth between daylight and studio set-ups).

Renaming wasn't necessary, but Renamer4Mac would have done instantly.

As you know James, I'm not a fanboy of any brand.
I don't own any equipment, and use whatever suits the project.
I have and still suffer through the growing pains of camera platforms; and software bugs and in-intuitiveness.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=200084\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

I'm not a fan of most of these systems either, but I do know that whatever changes can happen, usually will happen.

Renaming on the fly is important for most fashion work and you'd be amazed at the amount of times the files have to be renamed.

Also depending on how you light, batch exposure (even single) corrections come up, especially in a lifestyle shoot where the models are in an out of the key, or the sun in changing and though it's been a while does LC11 have an exposure correction or a brightness correction?

Processing in large batchs is a fact of life and almost every project I shoot the AD wants some of the images processed and sent upline to a designer or a client usually while we are shooting.

What I understand is LC11 is now stable software, but is it great or is it just great compared to the previous LC10's which had a lot of issues.

I think that's how we judge a lot of this stuff, in the fact that it's not as bad as it was before so it must be pretty good and in reality in all should be just flat good.

third party workarounds for naming or batch corrections shouldn't be required.

JR

[AndrewDyer]

Hi James.

I think LC11 is good software on it's own merit... not just compared to previous versions...
but having said that, it still need to be made better.
To answer your question... No, it still does not have an exposure adjustment slider... just those annoying curves plus Brightness and a Contrast sliders. (although some people may be able to
get the look they want from using them, I much prefer the controls in Adobe software)

But, it's stability and output quality make it good software I think.
It also seems faster at processing now too (not including faster Macs)

Andrew

[James R Russell]

Hi James.

I think LC11 is good software on it's own merit... not just compared to previous versions...
but having said that, it still need to be made better.
To answer your question... No, it still does not have an exposure adjustment slider... just those annoying curves plus Brightness and a Contrast sliders. (although some people may be able to
get the look they want from using them, I much prefer the controls in Adobe software)

But, it's stability and output quality make it good software I think.
It also seems faster at processing now too (not including faster Macs)

Andrew
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=200092\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Andrew,

I'm glad lc11 is better.

I'll be the first to admit I was snake bit by LC10 and some things were so wrong that I just gave up but I know a lot of people that stuck with Leaf and now have a workable software so for them, yes I'm very glad.


JR

[yaya]

Shot uncompressed to separate folders (100-300 captures each).

Locked in color balance and curve at beginning of each folder
(back and forth between daylight and studio set-ups).

Renaming wasn't necessary, but Renamer4Mac would have done instantly.

As you know James, I'm not a fanboy of any brand.
I don't own any equipment, and use whatever suits the project.
I have and still suffer through the software bugs and un-intuitiveness.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=200084\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Billy next time shoot compressed tethered, saves you loads of space...

Yair

[AndrewDyer]

Billy next time shoot compressed tethered, saves you loads of space...

Yair
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=200098\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Unless you want to also play around with the files in ACR as well...
ACR / Lightroom doesn't like the compressed files so you will have to re-save them from LC11.

[yaya]

Unless you want to also play around with the files in ACR as well...
ACR / Lightroom doesn't like the compressed files so you will have to re-save them from LC11.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=200106\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

No Andrew, files that are shot compressed TETHERED can go straight into anything

Yair

[snickgrr]

No Andrew, files that are shot compressed TETHERED can go straight into anything

Yair
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=200108\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Did not know that!  That is a great bit of information.  That will save me all kinds of space on the ol' hard drives.

[AndrewDyer]

No Andrew, files that are shot compressed TETHERED can go straight into anything

Yair
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=200108\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Sorry Yair. I didn't realise that... that is great to know.
Many thanks.
Andrew

[perbernal]

Thanks for your input  and information guys. To narrow things down am I correct to assume the following;

* Better skin tones
* ISO good up to 100
* Great Capture Speed
* Solid tethered shooting
* LC 11 now stable
* Necessary to shoot to separate folders (maximum 700 file/folder)?
* Renaming important?
* Possible to shoot tethered to bridge through LC 11 and open compressed files in CS3
* Possible to shoot compressed onto cards & open files directly in CS3?
* Large batching could be time consuming

It seems to me that the 54S could be a happy medium, where I will still have a fast and practical workflow, with top quality image files and fast flash duration for outdoor work. Only downside would be the time consuming batching of large jobs, which is a big minus. Question is how fast it would be to convert, let say 1000 raw files to low res Jpegs (about 5-6 mb). This is usually the files that I ftp to art directors. Once again, I really appreciate your input and time.

Best regards, Per Bernal

[BJNY]

Repeating the usual advice:
Try the gear under your normal circumstances before buying.

I don't know if the reaction time of medium format equipment is quick enough
for your "action" type photos.

[afremiotti]

I use the Aptus 75s/H1 combo all the time for high volume studio and location fashion jobs and it works very nicely. We'll often do well over a 1,000 frames a day on many different setups sometimes shooting in bursts of 100-200 frames. And rarely have any issues, it never even slows down actually. I am the digital tech on these jobs so I'll feel the brunt of it when things get sticky and this is definitely my choice for this type of shooting.

We'll usually shoot 50 or 100 iso but the camera handles 200 and 400 nicely, as long as you aren't doing exposures over 5 seconds.

I also like it because I can set it to capture in LC11 and check focus on every single frame. And set my color in ACR to preview, edit, and process in Bridge. Both of these things are really important. I can use ACR for most stuff including Phase and Canon, but I haven't found a way to check focus as efficiently, at least not with C1Pro 3.8

I process as we shoot so at the end of the day I usually hand the art director a dvd with every image processed to jpeg. Most of the time I am also printing contact sheets of the selects and doing comps for clients in photoshop.

I'm constantly naming and renaming files too.

Admittedly I am using a really fast tower to due all this.

There are some aspects of the workflow that could be refined but overall it is very nice.

I assume the 54s would have the same easy workflow except faster capture and processing times. Can't speak for iso

I consider myself pretty non biased too, I use a P45+/afdII combo for most of my own shooting jobs.

Andrea

[perbernal]

Repeating the usual advice:
Try the gear under your normal circumstances before buying.

I don't know if the reaction time of medium format equipment is quick enough
for your "action" type photos.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=200133\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

I will be testing the back tomorrow to make a final decision. You might be right about catching action type shots with a medium format camera, but usually I prefocus, pre frame and "rehearse" these kind of fast shots before taking them, so in theory there shouldn´t be to much of difference, as it´s more about timing. Thanks for your input though.

Best, Per

[BJNY]

Per,
I'm referring to the delay [milliseconds]
between pressing the shutter release, and making the capture.
Good luck,
Billy

Also, see at what f-stop gives you the same amount of depth-of-field
you're accustomed to having with 35mm format.