Michael's review of H5d60

[gigdagefg]

I enjoyed reading his review and agree with most if not all of his viewpoints. The one area that he did not touch on is the superiority of the Hasselblad focusing system which I personally found as the biggest reason that I stayed with Hasselblad over Phase One.
Stanley

[synn]

I enjoyed the review too. I am a Mamiyaleaf owner, but that was a really well written review and I agree with almost all of his assessments.
I really hope Blad improves the screen on the back with the next generation. That was one of the main things that pushed me to the other camp. As someone who mostly does on location portraiture, it's very important to me.

[michael]

I enjoyed reading his review and agree with most if not all of his viewpoints. The one area that he did not touch on is the superiority of the Hasselblad focusing system which I personally found as the biggest reason that I stayed with Hasselblad over Phase One.
Stanley

Really? Can't see that I see any superiority. It's the same old slow single point system that all MF systems have.

Michael

[douglevy]

Michael I was wondering the same thing when I read it - about the lack of commentary on the "True Focus" system. As someone who has only used the H1 and H2, I was just more curious than anything.

[jerome_m]

That and, apparently, the "true focus" system has been improved. Now it directly brings you to the point where you did the focus when you zoom in the picture.

I have not had a H5D (or even a H4D) in my hands, but I understand that their focus works in the following manner:
-you point the element which you want to have in focus (e.g., the model's eye)
-your recompose and take the picture
-when you review the picture and zoom in, that part will be directly presented on screen.

I may be a small thing but I think it is quite useful in practice. Who has not been hunting around a small camera screen when checking focus?

[bpepz]

I enjoyed reading his review and agree with most if not all of his viewpoints. The one area that he did not touch on is the superiority of the Hasselblad focusing system which I personally found as the biggest reason that I stayed with Hasselblad over Phase One.
Stanley

Link to the review?

[Ken Doo]

Go to the LL Homepage and click on What's New---Review is there.  http://www.luminous-landscape.com/whatsnew/

Well-written review.

ken

[JV]

If I recall correctly there are 12 leaf shutter lenses instead of 9 as mentioned in the review: 10 primes and 2 zooms.

I enjoyed reading this.

[jerome_m]

10 primes and 2 zooms.

Indeed: 24, 28, 35, 50, 80, 100, 120 macro, 150, 210, 300, 50-110 and 35-90. Furthermore, the 50, 120 macro and 150 exist in 2 different versions.

[tho_mas]

nice review!

I only know Hasselblad files from the internet and from some random RAW files I've loaded now and then.
But every time I do see the high ISO files I think Hasselblad does a really, really great job in providing very nice and clean looking files "out of the box".
Much more pleasing than the high ISO files of the respective Phase and Leaf counterparts.
IMHO ...

[arashm]

Thank you for the review indeed.
I use both Phase and Hasselblad, and would like to add:
1- True Focus is a very big asset for anyone shooting people or fashion.
2- Phocus is now really holding back the system, I really think Hasselblad needs to update and improve, instead of using LR as a crutch. This is from the view point of someone who shoots tethered 95% of the time!
Not that there is anything wrong with using LR, I think that ability is fantastic, but I would like Phocus to be more C1 level.
I know this is not easy… but as mentioned these camera's should really be looked at as systems and Software is an integral part of that system.
Also wondering if rumours of a Sony built CMOS sensor for Hasselbald will come to play this Fotokina… (just thinking out loud

[Juanito]

[/quote]

Michael I was wondering the same thing when I read it - about the lack of commentary on the "True Focus" system. As someone who has only used the H1 and H2, I was just more curious than anything.

I own the H1 but have tested the True Focus system on the D4. It does what it says it does. Wide open, the H4 would be sharper on the eyes than the H1. Once you stopped down though, differences weren't noticeable. If you do a lot of wide open shooting, the True Focus system is definitely the better system. I usually do my portraits at f8 or f11 so it's not a big deal for me.

John

[eronald]

Hassy's much vaunted True Focus  shines on "focus and recompose" portrait images at medium distance with a short tele where it substitutes for extra focus points.

I believe Michael's uses are mainly landscape and sometimes street, and he writes about what he does.

I guess if you just use wide angles or do landscape, TrueFocus does not matter; to Michael it is an irrelevant feature.

Maybe some other practitioners -fashion, architecture, macro- can now give use their impressions of Hassy vs Phase, the aspects relevant to their specialty.

Edmund

[synn]

Hassy's much vaunted True Focus  shines on "focus and recompose" portrait images at medium distance with a short tele where it substitutes for extra focus points.

I believe Michael's uses are mainly landscape and sometimes street, and he writes about what he does.

I guess if you just use wide angles or do landscape, TrueFocus does not matter; to Michael it is an irrelevant feature.

Maybe some other practitioners -fashion, architecture, macro- can now give use their impressions of Hassy vs Phase, the aspects relevant to their specialty.

Edmund

When I made the choice to go Phamiya, I was indeed concerned about the focus accuracy. But so far, I find the single focus point (Yeah, there are 3, but in reality, you'll only be using one) of the DF+ to be extremely accurate and moderately fast. Like someone said about, it's highly unlikely that one would be shooting wide open while using strobes. Personally, I don't often go for the "One eye in focus, everything else is blurred" look much, if ever.

As for the other advantage (Focusing 100% on the focus point), with the Leaf back, one can double tap on the eye to go to 100% straight. If you shoot the next shot while the image is magnified, the next shot will also be displayed at 100% at the same point. This is quite useful, IMO.

So yeah, for my usage case, it does seem like Truefocus does not offer any significant advantage. That said, it certainly does not hurt the proceedings and is always a good thing to have in one's arsenal.

[Juanito]

Just read the review. Though the history lesson was informative, the review itself was probably the most pointless one I've ever read.

John

[Ken R]

Just read the review. Though the history lesson was informative, the review itself was probably the most pointless one I've ever read.

John

Yeah, it is not really a review per se but rather a hands-on / first impression article. Enjoyed reading the history of it all. Michael has been part of the medium format digital era for a while.

[RVB]

One of the real positives of the H system is the viewfinder,it is better than the P1 viewfinder,it can be removed and replaced with a WLVF which is really useful,and true focus is very useful for fashion or portraits.

[ndevlin]

Perhaps I'll do an addendum to Michael's review at some point as I, coincidentally, have been working with an H4D-60 over the last month and a half. But these are the Coles notes thus far:

-- UI is a struggle at first for someone not familiar with the "H" ethos. But it's getting less-so fairly rapidly.  That is, the UI is growing on me. There's actually a lot of fairly powerful functionality hidden in these cameras, and I suspect that the H5 has even more.  It's just a question of figuring it all out. This is a camera that has had me in the manual a lot.

The back UI blows. But it, too, can be made pretty functional with not a huge amount of practice.  One really nice feature is the instant focus confirmation, which allows any of a number of buttons to be programmed to provide a 100% zoom-to of the point of focus during initial review.  This works well, despite the piddly screen resolution.

The screen is a joke, but the nice long histogram and luscious OVF make up for that.  If I cared about the screen I'd shoot tethered.  Which, let me say, is a pleasure. I especially like the iPad app for tethering, which is very practical (though you still need a main computer to tether-to).

The H4D-60 is specifically made for tech camera use as well, and has things like a sync-socket built right in. I haven't tried this yet, but hope to give it a go on a Fuji GX680 to see whether that might make a nice field system.

And the files. Wow.  MF finally looks the way I've always hoped MF files to look but have never quite achieved with either my Pentax 645 or D800e.  The files have 'depth' to them. You can bend them into pretzles and they hold.  Two stops under at ISO 200? No problem, it all comes happily back in post.  Want to go hard on the sky with a Clarity brush? No problem, nothing gets crunchy.  And the skin tones.......yup.

You get what you pay for, is the short answer. The 60MP back is, imho, the total MF sweet spot.  Beats 35mm by miles, has surprisingly good middle ISO performance, only burns 260MBs per TIFF  

Happy shooting.

- N.  

[synn]

Congrats, Nick. Glad to see that you are enjoying your new purchase. Hope to see some wonderful landscapes with it soon.

I really do love the look from the Hassy 100mm lens. it's a real gem and I hope it's on your shortlist.

[eronald]

I wonder what the difference is between the 50 and the 60.

You get what you pay for, is the short answer. The 60MP back is, imho, the total MF sweet spot.  Beats 35mm by miles, has surprisingly good middle ISO performance, only burns 260MBs per TIFF 

Happy shooting.

- N.