My H4D-40 arrived yesterday :-)

[john milich]

it is from albert E's theory of special relativity, allows one to to calculate length change as speeds approach the speed of light.  pretty non-intuitive stuff, had me pulling hairs out back in grad school

[yaya]

One comment: it has often been suggested, and again in that blog, that developing a multi-point AF module for 645 format would be prohibitively expensive ... but the very first MF camera with AF, the Pentax 645N, had three point AF, and the extra two should already help in a number of off-center subject situations. Maybe Pentax should sell that AF module to other 645 makers, at a suitably profitable "Hassleblad/Phase One" price point.

AFAIK the 645N used an off-the-shelf 35mm module (Minolta?) and the 3 points were clustered in the centre. The Phase One AF/ DF and Mamiya 645AFDIII and 645DF have a similar feature.

Yair

[David Grover / Capture One]

The issue is not really expense.

The problem lies with the size of MF viewfinders and sensors.

The further you move AF points outwards the less accurate they become.

Not so much of an issue if you have the DOF to compensate, but very much an issue if you are using the HC100 wide open for example.

Have them usably far enough apart would simply result in inconsistent results.

Then you are no better off than single point AF.

True Focus at least compensates for a recomposition error.

David

[David Grover / Capture One]

The issue is not really expense.

The problem lies with the size of MF viewfinders and sensors.

The further you move AF points outwards the less accurate they become.

Not so much of an issue if you have the DOF to compensate, but very much an issue if you are using the HC100 wide open for example.

Have them usably far enough apart would simply result in inconsistent results.

Then you are no better off than single point AF.

True Focus at least compensates for a recomposition error.

David

[Nick-T]

One comment: it has often been suggested, and again in that blog, that developing a multi-point AF module for 645 format would be prohibitively expensive ... but the very first MF camera with AF, the Pentax 645N, had three point AF, and the extra two should already help in a number of off-center subject situations. Maybe Pentax should sell that AF module to other 645 makers, at a suitably profitable "Hassleblad/Phase One" price point.

Well I talked to a guy who knows about this stuff and here's his response:

The Pentax was the first MF camera with AF and it together with the Mamiya and the H camera use a very similar AF sensor with three main areas for focusing. I attach a drawing for the H camera where you can see that we do actually have three (four if you count the central cross as two) areas. You can also see that the two extra sensors make a little more sense if used on the 35-mm format which the sensor was designed for in the first place.
We think that the two vertical sensors are too close to the centre to make any difference. Both the Pentax and the Mamiya has exactly the same situation but they obviously decided to use all sensors. We also felt that if you should have more than one area, you need a very good way of indicating which area that is beeing used and also a good way to manually select area. Both these problems was very hard to solve (neither Pentax nor Mamiya have done that). As a result we felt that having just a central area was the best for the H camera. We didn't want a situation where the camera would make its own judgements of which area to use and not beeing able to indicate that. We always think the photographer should be 100% in control. These are the reasons why we don't use the extra two vertical sensors in the H camera.
[attachment=20761:Picture_5.png]
HTH
Nick-T

[NikolaBorissov]

Hi again, guys!

Today I finally had some time to shoot some sample images with the H4D, this time with the HCD 35-90 (it finally arrived yesterday). Sorry for the delay, but I had a really busy week   Unfortunately none of the jobs I've shot since last week is out yet, so can't show any fashion photographs until they are published! In the time being, my backyard will have to do the job

The .rar file contains 12 FFF files, with settings ranging from f4 to f11, 100 to 800 ASA, at both 35 & 90mm. Again, I am not the testing kinda guy, so I just snapped some pics in my backyard, handheld (managed to stay out for 5 mins, it's freezing cold out here!), of course without any artistic intentions. I was choosing situations which would give me an idea of what the camera is capable of in terms of DR, detail and noise in real-life use on location.  

Some quick first impressions on the 35-90: the AF is WAY, and I mean WAY faster than the other Hasselblad lenses that I've used (50-110, 80, 120, 150). Much more comfy than the old zoom. Completely handheldable, it's shorter than the 70-200/2.8 IS, a little bit fatter and a little bit heavier (or maybe it feels so because of the all-metal construction, I haven't compared the specs on paper). I would have no problems in shooting handheld with it all day, but on the other hand I'm not very petite, your mileage may vary. I was just checking the samples, the IQ at both the wide and the tele ends is amazing, I guess it's worth all the bulk and weight.  

A propos, did I mention that TruePhocus is brilliant? It works flawlessly, my worries from last week were in vain. All the 290 shots I took during the first shoot with the H4D last week were tack sharp, and all of them were shot at a close distance and shallow DOF,  with recomposing. I love the guy who invented it, really. Finally a usable AF on a MF system, yey. I take back everything that I've said in the past about the lousy AF in the H3DII - this solution is much better than the multi-point AF systems, you can literally focus anywhere in the frame. For my kind of work it's simply the best I could possibly want. It doesn't even need any time to get used to - I simply enabled the "true phocus in af-s" option, et voilà - no additional button pushing required.

While waiting for the files to upload, I'm randomly browsing them and just noticed the huge difference in the file size - from 58 to 78 MB (Hasselblad having specified around 50?). Well, the more-the better

I am utterly impressed with the noise level at 800 ASA. I had to double-check the noise reduction sliders to make sure they are at 0. Fantastic! I wouldn't hesitate to use it for commercial shoots.

After having spent a week and a half with the H4D, I can safely say that I've found my perfect camera, exactly what I needed and wanted. H3DII wasn't it, but TruePhocus and the usable high ISO filled the gap :-) If it only could shoot raw+jpg and have a wifi option... aaaah....

CLICK HERE for the FFFs , 700 mb:-)

[Toto]

CLICK HERE for the FFFs , 700 mb:-)

No offense, but I'm more impressed by the H4D40 at 800 iso and how Phocus handles it than by your garden photos

[NikolaBorissov]

None taken! I'm also never impressed by the chords produced by musicians when they are tuning their instruments :-)

[EricWHiss]

These are pretty nice - thanks for sharing.   The files have a lot of detail at ISO 800 and that's impressive.  Some small purple and green splotches in the dark areas at ISO 800 but its minor.  Overall very nice!    I wonder if you have tried shooting underexposed files at say ISO 200 or 400 and moving them up in phocus?   I find that ISO 200 on my Ixpress adjusted up by 1 stop look better than ISO 400 and ISO 200 pushed up 2 stops to ISO 800 looks better than ISO 400 pushed up 1 stop.   I don't know why or if this has more to do with the ixpress than phocus.   Overall the noise control is really nice.

[bradleygibson]

If Phocus handles the H4D-40 anything like the way it handles CFV-39 files, the software applies specific high ISO noise reduction automatically (you can't disable or control it).

This is not a bad thing, as the results are spectacular for medium format, but when pushing  low ISO images, I would expect a much noisier result, as I assume Phocus' high-ISO noise reduction algorithms wouldn't be kicking in to improve the result.

I find that ISO 200 on my Ixpress adjusted up by 1 stop look better than ISO 400 and ISO 200 pushed up 2 stops to ISO 800 looks better than ISO 400 pushed up 1 stop.   I don't know why or if this has more to do with the ixpress than phocus.   Overall the noise control is really nice.

[vandevanterSH]

If Phocus handles the H4D-40 anything like the way it handles CFV-39 files, the software applies specific high ISO noise reduction automatically (you can't disable or control it).

This is not a bad thing, as the results are spectacular for medium format, but when pushing  low ISO images, I would expect a much noisier result, as I assume Phocus' high-ISO noise reduction algorithms wouldn't be kicking in to improve the result.

Have you compared the first Phocus release to 2.x??  I recently intentionally underexposed, by several stops, several images that had deep shadows and high lights.  The ability of Phocus 2.x to pull detail out of shadows with more than acceptable noise was amazing.  My only comparison was ACR which produced a worthless result.  From my early experience with my entry level CFV, I had considered ISO 400 to be essentially unusable, now with Phocus 2.x things might have changed.

Steve

[EricWHiss]

If Phocus handles the H4D-40 anything like the way it handles CFV-39 files, the software applies specific high ISO noise reduction automatically (you can't disable or control it).

This is not a bad thing, as the results are spectacular for medium format, but when pushing  low ISO images, I would expect a much noisier result, as I assume Phocus' high-ISO noise reduction algorithms wouldn't be kicking in to improve the result.

This seems to be true - the luminance slider defaults to zero but there is a negative range which presumably can be used to lessen the NR but they do look nice at the default settings so I think they must have been optimized.   As I've only recently made the switch from flexcolor to phocus I'm not so knowledgeable.  Perhaps Nick-T or David Grover can step in and explain how the NR works.

[Dick Roadnight]

Hi again, guys!

, so I just snapped some pics in my backyard, handheld (managed to stay out for 5 mins, it's freezing cold out here!), of course without any artistic intentions. I was choosing situations which would give me an idea of what the camera is capable of in terms of DR, detail and noise in real-life use on location.

I would be more interested to see "what the camera is capable of in terms of DR, detail and noise in real-life use on location" on a tripod with the mirror locked up.

I was hoping to clearly see the texture of the (in focus) snow in your pictures, but I could not... are you really getting the most out of the camera hand-held?

With a view camera I would hope to be able to see the texture in all the snow in pictures like yours, as all the snow is more or less in the same plane.

Pushing the contrast up to maximum and then using fill & recovery seems to work well on the pictures, even without clarity.