Cambo vs Hasselblad

[nicksouth]

Thanks again Doug, look forward to any comarisons between the Scheinder and Rodenstock lenses. Particularily the 24mm Scheinder, 40mm Rodenstock and 47mmXL Scheinder. Anyone got some optimum near focus to sharp infinity focus numbers for the 24mm?

Cheers
Nick

[Dick Roadnight]

Thanks again Doug, look forward to any comarisons between the Scheinder and Rodenstock lenses. Particularily the 24mm Scheinder, 40mm Rodenstock and 47mmXL Scheinder. Anyone got some optimum near focus to sharp infinity focus numbers for the 24mm?

Cheers
Nick

Are Sinar lenses badge-engineered Rodenstocks?

[Enda Cavanagh]

I use the Cambo wide DS with the back of my Hasselblad H3D 39 at least 90% of the time.

 I got the new Schneider 28mm lens about a month after Photokina. It's not an off the shelf lens shall we say. There are focus issues with the lens and it won't go into production until they resolve this. I got the lens early cos I pushed Cambo for it. I needed it to shoot the new Dublin Airport terminal. 

Once I did my own test shots to determine where I should actually focus so everything would appear sharp the lens was fine as it has such a short focal length. I already have the Schneider 24mm 35mm and 47mm and the 28mm blows them out of the water. I mean the sharpeness of this lens is jaw droopingly sharp. I had the Hasselblad 28mm (until it was bloody stolen) and again there is no comparison. 

Another huge advantage over the other lenses is the huge image circle with such a wide angle lens. The 24mm is a beautifully sharp lens but has pretty much 0 movements. The 28mm lens has 20/17mm movements for a lens that's almost as wide. I am an architectural and landscape photographer. This is Nirvana. If you look at my websute I go for quite strong compositions where I really push the limits of the camera movements.(not my older Mamiya 7 images). Only yesterday i was at the airport and this lens just leaves me gobsmacked. Can't wait for Christmas holidays for some landscape shooting. 

Before the 28mm lens I'd say I used the 35mm 90% of the time when using the Cambo. It has a nice perspective while still be pretty wide. A stitched image with the 35mm for me works way better than the 24mm where internal architectural spaces can look very distorted (plus you've no movements with the 24mm. This is crucial for an architectural photographer irrespective of how wide your lens is.)

Now that I've got the new Schneider 28mm I probably have the most important addition to my setup since well..ever. 

The main drawback for me using a Hasselblad back over say a Phase one is the battery source. I believe with Phase one you use Sony batteries whereas the battery of a Hasselblad it's in the camera grip. You put the back in the view camera and you have no power. You either tether your camera to say a laptop or you use a rechargeable battery source like the one from Big Wave Power. The problem is they run out of juice after any where from 30 to 90 minutes. I believe Hasselblad are going to do something similar to Phase one with their next generation cameras getting rid of this hassle. Parden the pun. 

Personally if you shoot landscape or architecture I think the view camera with the back whether it be Phase one or Hasselblad would be my system of choice. I myself would stick with the Hasselblad. It's a great system. It's not perfect and it has an ever improving software in Phocus. Way better than it's crappy predecessor. 

Good luck with whatever system you choose

[Harold Clark]

I use the Cambo wide DS with the back of my Hasselblad H3D 39 at least 90% of the time.

 I got the new Schneider 28mm lens about a month after Photokina. It's not an off the shelf lens shall we say. There are focus issues with the lens and it won't go into production until they resolve this. I got the lens early cos I pushed Cambo for it. I needed it to shoot the new Dublin Airport terminal. 

Once I did my own test shots to determine where I should actually focus so everything would appear sharp the lens was fine as it has such a short focal length. I already have the Schneider 24mm 35mm and 47mm and the 28mm blows them out of the water. I mean the sharpeness of this lens is jaw droopingly sharp. I had the Hasselblad 28mm (until it was bloody stolen) and again there is no comparison. 

Another huge advantage over the other lenses is the huge image circle with such a wide angle lens. The 24mm is a beautifully sharp lens but has pretty much 0 movements. The 28mm lens has 20/17mm movements for a lens that's almost as wide. I am an architectural and landscape photographer. This is Nirvana. If you look at my websute I go for quite strong compositions where I really push the limits of the camera movements.(not my older Mamiya 7 images). Only yesterday i was at the airport and this lens just leaves me gobsmacked. Can't wait for Christmas holidays for some landscape shooting. 

Before the 28mm lens I'd say I used the 35mm 90% of the time when using the Cambo. It has a nice perspective while still be pretty wide. A stitched image with the 35mm for me works way better than the 24mm where internal architectural spaces can look very distorted (plus you've no movements with the 24mm. This is crucial for an architectural photographer irrespective of how wide your lens is.)

Now that I've got the new Schneider 28mm I probably have the most important addition to my setup since well..ever. 

The main drawback for me using a Hasselblad back over say a Phase one is the battery source. I believe with Phase one you use Sony batteries whereas the battery of a Hasselblad it's in the camera grip. You put the back in the view camera and you have no power. You either tether your camera to say a laptop or you use a rechargeable battery source like the one from Big Wave Power. The problem is they run out of juice after any where from 30 to 90 minutes. I believe Hasselblad are going to do something similar to Phase one with their next generation cameras getting rid of this hassle. Parden the pun. 

Personally if you shoot landscape or architecture I think the view camera with the back whether it be Phase one or Hasselblad would be my system of choice. I myself would stick with the Hasselblad. It's a great system. It's not perfect and it has an ever improving software in Phocus. Way better than it's crappy predecessor. 

Good luck with whatever system you choose

Thanks Enda for your informative post, especially interesting to hear of your impressions of the new 28mm. As someone who obviously has a lot of experience with the Cambo, I am curious as to what method you use to frame and focus. Having had long experience with view cameras I can't imagine working without a sliding back, but then again even though I am an old dog perhaps I could learn a new trick.

The Artec, Arca RM3 etc provide this capability, but I am thinking of easing into MF for my architecture clients without blowing the budget, and the availability of used Cambo equipment at reasonable prices makes this more feasible. I am not sure they will notice the difference, or it will earn me any more, but it may be worth a try.

[nicksouth]

Thanks for the information. 28mm would be my focal length of choice, when will the Scheinder come online? I had heard both the Rodenstock and Scheinder lenses at 28mm were not the best of the large format bunch?? Any help much appreciated.
Cheers
Nick.

[tho_mas]

Another huge advantage over the other lenses is the huge image circle with such a wide angle lens. The 24mm is a beautifully sharp lens but has pretty much 0 movements. The 28mm lens has 20/17mm movements for a lens that's almost as wide.

good to hear your positive findings about the 28XL!
I made a test shot end of September and was not exactly impressed by the corner sharpness. But I am not sure whether the shot was focussed correctly. Maybe I just screwed up the shot...  (though the image center was very sharp).
May I ask how you handle the heavy light falloff with large movements? It is around 4 stops (maybe even more). Do you just shoot multiple exposures and merge the captures with the LCC files used as masks in Photoshop?
Too... how do you use 20mm shift with the 28XL? I "only" could go up to 15mm (lateral in horizontal composition) as with larger movements the rear lens mount was blocked by the camera interface  (as it is so extremely close to the sensor). But that was on a Wide RS and maybe the interface design on the Wide DS is a bit different.
Thanks!

[rhsu]

Doug,

You always amaze me with the things you develop and hidden away from us!  Well done!

Regarding stitching, I wish Cambo would do a Cambo T/S with HR90mm - thus utilising its incredible large IC.

 

[Enda Cavanagh]

Well I have to say the Schneider is a wonderful lens. It is a wee bit soft as you go towards the edge of the image circle but much better than the Schneider 35mm. It's the best lens in my kit I think.

[Enda Cavanagh]

Hi Thomas
As I mentioned it's has some softening at the corners when you get towards the edge of the image circle. Other than that it's a very sharp lens. There are issues with the focus on the lens. As I said the lens I have actually has a 24mm focus ring on it because Cambo were not happy with the focus mount Schneider provided. I was really annoyed with this. This is what's causing the delay with the production of the lens. The 28mm lens was supposed to become online back in September.

Ya there is a fair bit of light fall up due to the omission of an analogue centre filter. I use Hasselblad phocus. There are 2 solutions for the vignetting. One is to use the equalise intensity filter in Phocus after setting you white card calibration shot. I believe Capture one has such a tool also. This doesn't work so well with anything other than small camera movements due the amount of color noise you get. The other solution is to use the new digital centre filter supplied with the lens. It works much better. Although it really messes up with your workflow because after first doing all your adjustments in Phocus, getting rid of color cast etc, you than have to go into CS4 (it's only available in 32bit) and use the plugin. You have to make slightly different settings depending on if the image is normal, under or overexposed. So add to that, that most of the time I seem to shoot panoramics, you're not exactly talking about the speediest of workflows. This is one of the main drawbacks with this lens. There is no option to use an analogue centre filter. Have to say that halos and ghosting were not really a problem for me when using this lens. Much better than the 35mm lens which is at times a nightmare for my internal architecture shots when there are multiple spot lights pointing in different directions. Maybe this is down to the omission of a physical analogue centre filter. Pros and cons heh!!

How do you mean how do I use 20mm?? That's about the limit of the image circle...at least officially. I didn't have those issues you had. I have actually done a panoramic where I went up 11 and than left and right 15mm. It is only after this point that you start to get a solid vignetting in the corner of the image. The rest of the vignetting can be sorted out with the digital centre filter. That is incredible for a lens of this focal length. Yes there was a bit of noise which I had to get rid of using dfine and some softening of the corners but those are some pretty impressive movements. After tweaking I had corners with zero noise and no visible difference in sharpness once sharpening was also applied.

Haven't had time to shoot an Landscape images yet. Been a busy bee. One big pain in the behind is I can't get my hands on a neutral density filter for the lens. A 112mm diameter is supplied with the lens. B+W and Rodenstock don't make on in this size contrary to B&H's site. Lee filters have a new 150mm square filter system just out. The only option I can come up with so far is to blu tac the bloody thing thing to the lens. However the earlies I can my hands on one is in 10 weeks!! Very high tech. If anyone can let me know of a better option, I'd be really grateful.

Hope that was of some help

[Doug Peterson]

Ya there is a fair bit of light fall up due to the omission of an analogue centre filter. I use Hasselblad phocus. There are 2 solutions for the vignetting. One is to use the equalise intensity filter in Phocus after setting you white card calibration shot. I believe Capture one has such a tool also. This doesn't work so well with anything other than small camera movements due the amount of color noise you get. The other solution is to use the new digital centre filter supplied with the lens. It works much better. Although it really messes up with your workflow because after first doing all your adjustments in Phocus, getting rid of color cast etc, you than have to go into CS4 (it's only available in 32bit) and use the plugin.

Capture One (for Phase One backs) does have it's own version of this tool called Lens Cast Calibration. Same tool in C1 also removes dust spots automagically.

If you consider both a Hasselblad and Phase One on such a platform please be sure to use this tools in each software package and decide for yourself which one does a better job of correcting lens falloff regarding shadow detail/color-accuracy and noise.

Doug Peterson (e-mail Me)
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[tho_mas]

Thanks Enda!

So bottom line: you handle the light falloff by software correction.
I think it depends on personal choice and also on the digiback used.
I use a non-plus P45 and software based correction is of course doable but the edges can go quite noisy.
1 or 1.5 stops are good enough, 2 stops are "okay" (depending on the image)… but 4 stops look really noisy.
This is why I prefer the use of a glass centerfilter (with large movements… otherwise not).
As there is no glass centerfilter for the 43XL (at least not by now) I simply do multiple exposures and merge the images in Photoshop.
Which is very well doable but sometimes a bit tricky and cumbersome (boring, too…).
Just thought you might have a different… easier… workflow you could share here.

I'm a bit surprised regarding your findings about Schneider's DCF. I've tried the tool (for my 43XL) and ended up with images that were undercorrected (i.e. too dark at the edges) and the correction also increased contrast at the edges… therefore also an oversaturation of colors. Simply inaccurate.
Finally I found out that the DCF works Gamma depended (so the outcome differs if you correct a TIF in, say, AdobeRBB with Gamma 2.2 or ProPhotoRGB with Gamma 1.8 ). I've just deleted the thing from my computer.
The LCC based correction in C1 is accurate (as it is applied to the linear RAW before the tone curve of the input color space is assigned).

Regarding the 20mm shift with the 28XL I was just asking if you can use it physically on the WDS.
The rear of the 28XL is so extremely close to the sensore that the rear standard of the WRS gets blocked by the rear lens (at 16mm lateral shift or so).
So in conjunction with the slim WRS body you can't use the full ammount of movements … but the WDS design is obviously different.

[Enda Cavanagh]

Ya sure I can physically move it to 20mm no problem. It must be due to the construction of the WRS. Not good.

I'm only using the digital recently and am still getting a handle on it. I'm literally going through proof shots from the airport shoot now. I too would much prefer the option of using the physical filter but Schneider don't provide that option unfortunately. On saying that I have used quite large movements with the lens and the digital centre filter seems to be coping pretty well. They are just low res jpgs for now. I haven't done my TIF's yet until I get confirmation from the client. That probably won't be until the new year. The shoot is been seriously hampered with the awful weather we've been having for the last 3 weeks.

You say that your images were under corrected using the digital centre filter but the power slider allows you to adjust the strength of the adjustment. At 100 percent you are actually over corrected.

[tho_mas]

I too would much prefer the option of using the physical filter but Schneider don't provide that option unfortunately.

that's really ridiculous for a lens with such a falloff.* Get in contact with Schneider and ask them to make one!
They assured me that they will make one for the 43XL (not a series but per order) ... after several emails...

You say that your images were under corrected using the digital centre filter but the power slider allows you to adjust the strength of the adjustment. At 100 percent you are actually over corrected.

then maybe the correction profile of the 43XL works differently... at 100% there is an undercorrection (at least in conjunction with Gamma 1.8 ).


edit:
here's a white reference shot of the 28XL at 15mm shift (with the P45).
If you look at the histogram it's pretty obvious that no software can correct this falloff without introducing noise.
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/forum/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=47215.0;attach=25197;image

[Enda Cavanagh]

I know. I wasn't too happy before getting the lens that I would have to use the digital centre filter, purely because of the extra workload. That's interesting to hear about you been promised a centre filter. Think it's time for a bit of email harassing on my part. It's like getting blood out of a stone with Schneider.

[tho_mas]

Think it's time for a bit of email harassing on my part.

try it!
Can't hurt to let them know what you think about the lack of glass centerfilters...
I think they are on the wrong track when they skip to offer these tools but a software solution instead.