I'm now in Miami shooting ALOT with the 645AFD/III and the Leaf Aptus, didn't miss a shot, but did have ALOT of benifit of the higher dynamic range.
I have to shoot during the whole day (holiday ) so the dynamics within a scene can be cruel, as always I also shot some scenes with both cameras and the Leaf captures alot more highlight information.
But you are right the DSLR is more easy.
However to say that a MF is working against the photographer goes too far, the problem I'm having is in ONE lens and ONE lens only.
If I would have a faulty Canon lens I could also not blame the whole system
I think there is something that should be made clear about shooting medium format vs. a Canon or any other system.
One lens, or even one series of lenses that don't perform perfectly does not make any system less than worthwhile but something that keeps being discussed on all the forums really should be answered.
Can medium format become less complicated?As I write this, early tomorrow we begin an important project that has more production money than I should mention in public but the crew on the first segment is over 20 people, so that gives you some idea of the costs and importance.
It is one of those campaigns that might not make a career but could break one if anything goes wrong.
As much as I want to use medium format and I am carrying two full sets of medium format equipment, I am almost positive by the end of the day I will shoot most of the project with a Canon 1ds Mark III.
Not because it has higher DR, or more pixels, or even more detail, not because I stick a camera or lighting logo on the photos, but because tethered or portable, low or high iso the Canons will allow me to do virtually anything I want in almost any circumstance and let me get the shot without having to give the camera a second thought. In fact the Canon will almost be transparent once I start working.
Right now on these forums in regards to medium format we have participation from all 4 makes which I applaud. We also have new pricing structures coming out hourly, which I also think is good for the photographer.
We also just got through annoucakina which I found enormously disappointing. Only one manufacturer, (Sinar) announced a camera with a detailed lcd, in camera processing and maybe a clean 800 iso.
Everyone else added pixels, some moved the sensor size slightly larger, but none of them addressed software stability, mentioned large batch processing, higher iso, drastically easier workflow with preset film looks and did so in a system that works as easily as the Canon dslr, regardless of price.
So I say to all 4 of the camera company representatives that have joined this forum think of your product in this way.
Write a $200,000 check and tape it to the wall, put twenty workers in the room, 3 art driectors, 2 clients and set an 18 hour a day schedule knowing you will be shooting with window light, mixed hmi and daylight, flash at night, low china lantern tungsten in the late evening, available daylight of people racing by on mopeds, portraits on black of each subject and you have to do it with
your camera, knowing the web galleries and contact sheets have to be delivered in two days after the project.
Will you bet that $200,000 (actually much more than that in production) that your medium format camera system will work as quickly, easily, reliably and consistently as the Canon.
Will your file go into almost any 3rd party software without additional steps. If you ship a processed tiff and a raw file to the retouching company, can they process the raw to add detail, or change exposure and use it for blending and can they process it in Photoshop? Are your skintones in all these lighting circumstances beautiful out of the can or will it take dozens of software tweeks to hit the desired look and most importantly will your software do thousand of files from capture to process without crashing the computer and be compatible with the 4 computers and operating system most photographers use?
Is your lens offerings wide and diverse and available today for rent or purchase . If something goes down in Los Angels, Paris, or Hong Kong can I rent or buy a new one in hours, or at least in a day?
But think about this for a moment. Would you bet your own $200,000 that your current system will perform easily as a camera that costs 1/2 the price.
Would you show a client your lcd and say can you see the image, the detail the lighting? Will you have confidence that at 2am in the morning when you set down to edit ad batch a thousand files will your software work easily and with stability?
At the end of the day no client will compare a Leaf, Phase, Hasselbad or Sinar file next to the 1ds3, the client(s) will only see the final capture and judge it by a lot of criteria, though none of this will have anything to do with camera brand loyalty.
I very much appreciate the db maker's participation and the answering of direct questions, but do us a favor (or at least me) and answer the main questions of does your system do all of the things I just mentioned?
At thse costs, I and many others have to perform flawlessly. We have to have backups, stable software, easy to use cameras that don't hang up, glitch or burn through batteries. We must have tethering that works with our current computers, iso sensitivity that works under a multitude of lighting conditions, a file that is compatible and a most importantly a file that we can move to any film look that was available in the past, plus a whole new range of looks that we haven't even invented yet.
I can keep adding to the list but it's time to get some sleep.
Big Cooter
