Sinar Hy6/Leaf AFi and Sinar eMotion/Leaf Aptus series backs

[EricWHiss]

Carsten,
The High D screen comes in matte and split prism versions.  It was standard in the Hy6, so I'm betting you already have one.  Both matte and split prism version have dashed lines on the outside to show the 4.5 x 6 crop lines for portrait and landscape. 

[Carsten W]

The one I am looking at is 56704, with a centrally etched circle and a pair of brackets left and right. It does have some dashed lines as you describe. It isn't clear to me if it has micro prisms or not. I would prefer not. By the way, I see that you sell the Maxwell matte screen on your site. How do you find manually focusing with these, compared to the plain High-D screen?

My Hy6 didn't come with all the original accessories, and the only focusing screen I received was the split/prism/grid version. Nice screen, but not quite what I am looking for for most shooting. FWIW I am also missing a 45 degree prism cap and a shoulder strap, although I am not sure that I really need the latter. I will probably contact DHW for these items. I will probably need to melt down some bullion to pay for them though

[EricWHiss]

Hi Carsten,
If your screen has the split prism and the dashed lines you most likely have the 10772 screen.    As to which is preferred?  I spent an afternoon in a camera store my with my Hy6 mod2 tethered to a laptop seeing which screen people preferred and which one they were most accurate with.   It seems that people liked the matte screens better than the split prism ones for focusing on subjects manually.  It seemed that the Maxwell screens had a very slight edge in terms of people's preference but their accuracy was actually the same with both.   

Since you have a digital back, you can check a few things on your system quite easily by setting up the camera on a tripod and tethered.  First you should check and set the AF Offset values or micro fine tuning of the focus confirmation indicators for each of your lenses.  This is the same as tuning the autofocus on autofocus lenses - works the same way.     Once you have the lens focus fine tuned, you can practice manually focusing on subjects and see how far off you are with the indicator.   Sometimes it takes a little training to get used to what the focus looks like on a particular screen. This can help you improve your manually focusing accuracy.     

[dergiman]

Carsten, you could also try the screen you have in your 6008i. The screens fit in the Hy6, 6008 and some TLRs.

[Neil Folberg]

Hi Eric,
Any updates on the current state of the manufacturer of this wonderful system that so many people here seem to find pleasure in using?
Best wishes, Neil

[Carsten W]

I guess you know the recent news: DHW is insolvent, and is operating through guidance. They are, however, optimistic that ways can be found to continue, and they are still operating. If there is anything you want for your system, now would be a great time to support them. I will be making a small order soon, possibly including the 6060 back.

[EricWHiss]

Hi Neil,
I'll be at the factory next week and will know more then.  As Carsten wrote, they are operating now but with a reduced staff.  They do make some wonderful cameras.  I'm still surprised every day by people who didn't know about the Hy6 or even that they still make the TLR's.

[Carsten W]

Well, for better or for worse, I just picked up a slightly used copy of the Rollei 40mm f/3.5 Schneider Super-Angulon PQ HFT. I am a big Zeiss fan, but this lens has such a good reputation that I want to try it out, even if it isn't as sharp in the corners wide open as the Zeiss 40mm FLE might be. Now I just need a hood for it :/

[JV]

Now I just need a hood for it :/

My lens (bought on eBay) came with the hood.  It is one with a screw knob and unfortunately does not play well together with the lens cap.

My (outdated 2010) DHW price list has it for $268.96.  It is cheaper though on the rolleiflex.us website at $198.95.

[Carsten W]

Phillipp, I took a look at my 6008i screen, but it is also a split screen, so I will likely pick up a matte screen. I am considering getting the Maxwell screen from Eric...

I had an odd experience Saturday, and I was wondering if anyone has any ideas: I went out to do some testing of my lenses, to see which are good and which I might want to replace, with a high-resolution digital back things are surely different than with film. I got back, and in spite of having been in A mode, and having varied the aperture manually, I see no difference in depth of field with my aperture-bracketed shots... I picked up the camera and looked at the lens, and made some shots, and it seems to work fine, so I really don't understand what might have gone wrong.

I was not expecting trouble of this nature, so I will have to do some more focused testing, but was just wondering if someone could think of something silly I might have done. I did check that the camera was in A mode before leaving home, and that night it still was, so I consider it unlikely that it switched to something else in the daytime, and then back again, but it isn't 100% impossible.

I also got a couple of over-exposed shots, but oddly they seem to be the later shots in the sequences, where I was hitting smaller apertures (f/16-f/22), and not the early ones where I might have over-exposed due to not noticing that the shutter speed wasn't fast enough (I need to get used to checking that more carefully). Ideas? Might the shots come out in reverse order from either CaptureFlow or the camera? I wonder if I might have shot one sequence from small to large aperture, I will have to repeat and take good notes.

I also found out that my 80 Planar PQS does not work at 1/1000s on the Hy6, so I am considering either swapping it for the Schneider, or sending it to DHW to get the resistor snipped.

[Carsten W]

Has anyone here tried to tether the Hy6/eMotion 75LV to a Surface Pro? I have one lying around, and wonder if I should try it...

[Doug Peterson]

Has anyone here tried to tether the Hy6/eMotion 75LV to a Surface Pro? I have one lying around, and wonder if I should try it...

You can do this with a Phase One IQ or IQ2 back or a Mamiya Leaf Credo since they have USB3 as well as FW800.

How would you do this with a Hy6/eMotion 75LV?

[yaya]

Has anyone here tried to tether the Hy6/eMotion 75LV to a Surface Pro? I have one lying around, and wonder if I should try it...

Carsten the only way to tether your Hy6 to a Surface tablet is if you had a Credo 60 or a Credo 80 back on it...via USB and Capture One...

[Carsten W]

Well I don't know, that is why I am asking I thought I had read that owners of older Phase backs do it, but I guess they must have been the newer backs. I suppose I would need a Mac then, with a Thunderbolt to Firewire adapter. Maybe I will look for an older Macbook Air 11".

[Carsten W]

Thanks Yair and Doug, the Credo is nice, but out of my budget. I will have to find other solutions.

[yaya]

The eMotion back does have an onboard battery but I would check that it can reliably tether to an Air as you might need an additional power source for either the Mac or the back.

Cheers yair

[Carsten W]

Has anyone used the loupe vertical finder, whatever it is called, with the Hy6? I find myself using the WLF with loupe almost exclusively, and the proper finder may be better for this case. It does have higher magnification, does it?

[Gigi]

Haven't used the "chimney finder", but have seen it. Rather I rely on the focus confirmation and it does wonders. But dial it in for each lens. Instructions for how to set the AF offset are attached. Makes a big difference, and is not well documented.

[Carsten W]

I used the camera some more this weekend, and discovered that the Zeiss 80mm doesn't reach the smallest aperture openings. After about f/8 it doesn't stop down any further, which is where at least some of the over-exposed shots were coming from. Since it also doesn't use its 1/1000s shutter release time, I will likely send it in anyway, so that will be taken care of. I will test further to see if any of the other lenses have this problem.

I also tested some more to see if the lenses are stopping down in general, and it appears that the depth of field changes are much more subtle than I expected, but they are happening.

I need to test all combinations and send away the lenses needing maintenance. Does anyone know what the price is likely to be for a lens overhaul? I live in Germany.

I still haven't done the processing, just the shooting.

I am still learning little things, like it is faster to shoot to internal memory, and then transfer the images to CF card at some convenient time. The only way to see that this is happening is that the "images remaining" numbers on the info screen are red. There is no progress bar.

Another tip is that when attaching the back, lean in the bottom two prongs first, then click in the top two. If you try to do one side before the other, it may lock after the first side and have to be detached again.

Mounting and unmounting lenses is a little rough, and I will clean the bayonets carefully, and possibly apply a microamount of silicon lube or similar, to see if that gets rid of the stiffness.

I do wish that the lens release and grip release buttons were a little larger and easier to find without looking. They are small, a bit stiff to operate, and hard to find without looking.

[Carsten W]

While it would make sense to adjust each lens for focus, I tend not to like using automatic systems, since they never tell what they are locking on to, and so I will still pursue the best focusing screen and technique that I can. So far I haven't had a problem with inaccurate focus very much at all, so with a bit of care, it works, which is great. I had much more trouble with my Contax 645, in spite of the lower resolution of the eMotion 54LV I was using at the time, as well as with my ancient Hasselblad 500C (with film!).