Hi bcooter, I've followed yours and James's posts for the last three years or so since I started using a P45 on my contax. I enjoy what you have to say, and I like James's photography - so, if you like, I'm a fan, not a detractor.
Something that always surprised me, however, were your constant problems with C1. And especially, you sticking to 3x, when the processing speed of 4x and 5x are so much faster.
I'm posting because of your concern over compatibility with combining a phase back, contax 645, and capture 1. Like I said, I use the P45, but I doubt the P45 would work and not the 21 or 30. I'd just like to say that I have never had any problems with stability. I had problems with C1 recognizing the P45 on vista, but in 2 years of shooting a couple of thousand frames a month tethered, I may have had just less than a handful of crashes. And they were at the beginning with early versions of C1 4x; the back used to disconnect until I bought a (non phase recommended and quite cheap) 15ft firewire cable that has a much better connector into the back than the phase one I had been using. The new one is a much tighter fit.
I use a PC. A dual core - nothing special - but, I do have it dedicated to shooting tethered, and connected by ethernet to the rest of my set up. There's only photoshop occassionally open in the background for quick retouching. It's on XP. When shooting tethered out of the studio I shoot into a vista running sony notebook. I've only really shot slowly into that so I can't say I've put it through the works, but I've shot all day into the notebook without turning the back off, five days consecutively, 400 or so shots a day, and only once did the notebook freeze. And I'm sure that was a notebook issue, and not capture one.
So, I hope that this post will at least give you some encouragement that contax together with phase one back shooting tethered can work.
I'm only your run of the mill photographer, mainly shooting products, and I don't do mad crazy shoots that you describe (amusingly , and articulately), but in my real world experience I plug my P45 with my contax 645, a couple of times a week, into my PC, and it always starts up, and gets recognized by capture one. I hear that friendly beep, which tells me that I'm ready to shoot. I don't have to worry about the battery. I use the 15ft, not 30ft, so that may make a difference. The fashion editors bring me the products one by one, for four to six hours, and every time I take a shot it takes a second and a half or so for the image to come up on the monitor. I occassionally shoot clothes on models, where they then cut the models head off. And that's going the same speed that you probably shoot. As soon as the lights are ready then I take the shot, and I've never had a problem there either.
I don't know what to tell you about where your problem may be. I always create a new session. I only shoot RAW S not L. I use the grip with AA batteries as opposed to the lithium (not that I imagine that could make a difference). I use PC and not mac. I shoot and process during the shoot, in between products, or inbetween clothes changes. I have a folder on my hard disk dedicated to my session folders.
Anyway, I hope you win this feud with the capture one software, because it always seems a shame to hear you say how you're spending hours processing RAW files late into the night. I used to have to do that when shooting onto a card and using 3x where the processing time was almost 2 mins a shot. I used to hate that. And it was the main reason I switched to 4x. I disliked 4x for ages but learnt to use it because of ther processing speeds. There was no way I was going to be spending 3 times as long processing RAW files. C1 5x is now much more powerful than 3x ever was, and it takes 20 seconds to process a file, which I can easily do myself during the shoot. I shoot the last product, and by the time the fashion girls pack up the steamer and put everything away, I have the jpegs burnt onto a CD/DVD, and I don't have to think about the shoot again, until the magazine comes out and I count the pages to invoice. That's how things should work, and it does thanks to C1. I happen to use the contax and P45, but I recently tried the canon 5dii tethered to C1, and that seemed to work just as well.
Cheers for the timebeing, and best of luck
Stefan
