Hi
I did a BIG shoot last year with the Aptus 22/AFDII Mamiya with a repeater. What I mean by a repeater is the Aptus is power hungry & with a repeater you can shoot as fast as you can without a crash. The one reason I shoot with the Aptus besides speed is great skin tone!
Denis
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I've heard the skin tone thing before and actually did a lot of tests with the A-22 and the P30 to compare.
Most of the difference in skin tone became light, subject, processor dependent. With warm toned skin and window light and some flash, the Aptus was prettier, with HIMI's the P-30 was much nicer, especially in lightroom, with tungsten the P-30, with direct daylight the Aptus, etc. etc.
Neither one was really head and shoulders consistent above the others, so from my experience the skin tone thing of the Aptus, though mentioned like urban legend was just that.
Once again, some of this is processor dependent, and V4 has better ski tones than 3.78 for most scenarios.
The thing that I did notice that the great equalizer in all the cameras I use is Raw Developer. It pretty much allows you to even it all out to match.
JR
P.S. To add to this the one thing I've noticed about medium format is it's very color sensitive, especially to ambient color of the room or the scene.
Actually, compared to most films I find digital to pick up more ambient colors than film did.
I always thought one of the reasons film looked good was it was kind of stupid. It saw what was in front of the lens and not much else, where digital goes in different degrees of what it sees.
The Canons are more global in color the medium format backs more color specific. Medium format probably is much better in shooting fruit and color charts but put some model with light translucent skin in open shade and green grass and you can spend a lifetime getting the skin color to look human and not either pasty or bright green/yellow.
A few weeks ago in LA we did a lifestyle shoot and on one day shot kids doing active running leaping, jumping etc. For this day I shot the Canons and the P-30 side by side, mostly just to be sure I covered the action.
In post processing for the galleries the difference was dramatic. On the Phase, (the p30 more than the P21) it picked up the exact tone and color of each kids skin. Scientifically it was superior but if a kid was pasty white, the file was pasty white.
The Canons were more even across the board and regardless of the kids original skin color had more continuity.
Now in final Raw Developer is the equalizer, but it still takes specific presets to make this work.
I haven't shot the Aptus in a while so I can't comment on LC11 or even the newer Aptus backs, but Phase really needs to develope some new profiles for their backs to make them less sensitive in certain situations.
JR