Luminous Landscape Forum
Equipment & Techniques => Medium Format / Film / Digital Backs – and Large Sensor Photography => Topic started by: archivue on February 05, 2010, 04:43:54 am
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the war is declare ;-) (http://www.alpa.ch/en/news/2010/some-thoughts-about-sliding-backs.html?year=&num=)
they don't believed in sliding back... kapture group, arca... a mistake ?
they are designing new helical focusing ring... but hate the Arca's one, too precise ?
they are waiting for real live view... no need to remove the back anymore !
ANyway, removing the back in the field, isn't an option in some area !
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What they say about attachable sliding backs is mediately a plea for an integrated sliding back ... i.e. arTec.
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Well, I think they are damn right, but the alpa cameras are bloody expensive...
By the way, i like the fact that they listen to photographers, they listen to us. As you can see they have copied parts of one discussion in this forum I'm looking forward to see what photokina is bringing us
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ALPA is a real fine company and they listen to photographers, but not enough. In my kind of kind of working I can`t miss a sliding back of my ARTEC. The best would have been that ALPA would have bought SINAR. Imagine an Artec with interchangeable lenses to the ALPAs.
Michael
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You know I have a lot of respect for the Alpa product, but man I can't believe they allow such bitter diatribe on their company website! I find it highly unprofessional. After claiming to be the most precise and accurate game in town, perhaps they're just infuriated that Arca ate their lunch with the Rm3d. None of the previous helical focusing mounts come close to its precision. I'm not even going to mention how superior it's tilt mechanism is... doh! I just did.
LoL.... all in good fun, of course!
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the war is declare ;-) (http://www.alpa.ch/en/news/2010/some-thoughts-about-sliding-backs.html?year=&num=)
they are designing new helical focusing ring... but hate the Arca's one, too precise ?
Apparently they are designing new retrofittable scales, not a new helicoid:
"The original helical mounts made by Rodenstock and Schneider-Kreuznach for their lenses ... are perfectly precise enough for their tasks ... What is another matter is the precision of the DISTANCE SCALES (in m or ft) and of the DEPTH OF FIELD SCALES of the helical mounts made by Rodenstock and Schneider-Kreuznach: in some cases they are indeed not as exact - e.g. not offering the fine division - as we would like. We are actually thinking about an ALPA-specific solution for this .."
They call it like they see it and stick to their beliefs. Unlike many other companies they produce what they say they will produce, on time, and if it comes to their attention something is not right they fix it.
I cannot complain about them.
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Agree its a mean-spirited snipe, mostly at Arca, and completely unprofessional.
I have mixed feelings about Alpa:
They talk the talk about why they and only they have the precision and micro-tolerances for digital, that sliding backs don't... BUT then they will sell you a tilt adapter that thrown those tolerances to hell. so what did they bother for then?
Prices - e.g. Lenses - a Rodenstock 90mm f4.5 Digaron-W lens is $1675 in the US on its own, BUT via Alpa, on a spacer box with a $250 helical focus mount, that is inaccurate as they say, is $3400... Ouch! Oh and thats only available short barrel, so you have to spend another $540 for the spacers or $2020 for a tilt adapter. minimum total then is $4000 to use this $1675 lens on an Alpa. That is a bad joke.
Nor does it stop with lenses - every little piece, like a handgrip for the Max (that should be included for $6000 body price) is $580, a simple shoe adapter to mount a viewfinder at $150-250+. It isn't nice to feel gouged by them.
Viewfinders/ focusing - no great solution from them yet. Live View on via a tethered computer is the only completely accurate solution. Thank you Phase for making that possible, but try that in the field. Their viewfinder is only a broad indicator for wide / very wide lenses, not good for much else. A Ground Glass Screen is just that, and for digital work at optimum wider apertures is not accurate enough, despite what Alpa may claim.
I dont need my camera parts washed in Unicorn Tears, and would rather not pay for fancy flash animated websites, (with music, oh yes!) out of my recession hit earnings. Alpa do make a good product - I own two - but please realize precisely what it is: a very expensive metal box, with optional slidy bits.
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Interesting read, thank you!
I have been using ALPAs for 6 years with a lot of lenses. I sold all my longer glass last summer, I left only the 35mm and 45 mm scale focus lenses.
I do not understand why ALPA (or somebody else) cannot build a Leica type coupled rangefinder for 72-120mm lenses. IMO it will be easier
to use than that ALPA ground glass solution.
Just my opinion.
Yevgeny
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I'm quoted rather extensively in that piece so feel duty-bound to comment.
SLIDING BACKS
If you don't trust sliding backs (I didn't) then try the following:
1) Set the back to live view mode hooked up to a computer,
2) Focus it on a test scale like the Lens-Align one, getting the shot pin sharp with the lens wide open on the computer screen,
3) Slide the back backwards and forwards with the sliding back,
4) Look at the focus on the screen, (shoot if you like),
5) Check if you are sharp at exactly the point on the scale that was originally focused,
6) Repeat with different lenses
We did this with a well-worn, rental Arca Rotaslide and two different P65 backs. It was sharp every time with every lens (including the Rodenstock 40mm at F4). I didn't like the feel of play in it one bit but this didn't actually impinge on sharpness. The Alpa argument might sound impressive in principle but this experiment proves it false. I then went on to shoot 3-9 part stitched shots in several different countries in very difficult conditions and not one frame of one stitch had lost focus. This included shooting in pouring rain in the middle of the night with the camera perched right up on the top of a Gitzo 5561. (I was using my M-line and it was a bloody nightmare to focus in the first place but that's a discussion for later in the story...). Alpa are just wrong about this.
The second point is this, the major reason I want a sliding back is to compose on the ground glass. I love composing on ground glass, I've done it for years with film and I think for certain purposes it makes you take a better photograph, or at the very least, a different kind of photograph to anything you get from even the most beautiful of prism viewfinders. This is true of architectural photography in particular but also many other areas. Additionally, you really need a ground glass to compose and stitch. In my opinion, that's why stitched 35mm shots generally look so boringly composed (because they weren't, the camera was just pointed towards something that looked nice).
And of course with Alpa we aren't talking about a beautiful H4 or D3 prism viewfinder but something infinitely worse. Have you tried looking through the Alpa rangefinder? I mean really...it's a bad joke, a thing like that is way more of an obstruction to good pictures than, say, whether you shoot with the very sharpest lenses or the latest back. Grotesque distortion, incredibly vague composition etc. etc. and to be fair, the Arca one is only slightly better.
FOCUS
I went and saw Alpa, Sinar and Arca at the end of last year. All very impressive in their different ways but it seemed to me that only Arca had looked at the totality and really addressed the fundamental problem of achieving accurate focus: no ground glass can resolve sufficiently to accurately focus a high-end digital back. Ground glass is very low resolving, I've heard quoted 1-6 lp/mm. You can grind it finer but then it will transmit too much light through, you lose light intensity on the glass and your eye resolution drops because the pupil enlarges. It doesn't matter the power of your lupe or how fancy you get with your fresnel, ground glass isn't going to get you to the level of precision required. So you compose on the ground glass and move to a laser distance finder for really accurate focus. But then you are faced with the fact that the Rodenstock and Schneider helical mounts are ludicrously approximate items developed in the analogue age.
This is why the Arca RM3D and the RL3D is the right sort of answer to an absolutely crucial question. I just don't know how well it works in practise.
Where Alpa are absolutely right is that tablet computers, dedicated digital viewers etc. if realised properly, really could be the way forward. They also make beautiful cameras and have been very noble in offering for free their impressive looking distortion correction software (which I've admittedly only just downloaded).
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This is why the Arca RM3D and the RL3D is the right sort of answer to an absolutely crucial question.
maybe it will be the "tragedy" of the Rm3d that it's the best interim solution with its phantastic focussing mechanism... because small, easy portable, fast tethering solutions possibly will turn it in a dated camera within just a few months.
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Now... dom't get me wrong, I think Capture One Pro's Live View has come along way, but I honestly can't imagine relying on it on a daily basis. Slow, tedious and just annoying to work with. I don't think that workflow is going to supplant the current techniques anytime soon...
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This thread makes me even more confused which LF should I be planning to buy.. I hope photokina will clear out a thing or two. Or maybe it'll confuse me further
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Now... dom't get me wrong, I think Capture One Pro's Live View has come along way, but I honestly can't imagine relying on it on a daily basis. Slow, tedious and just annoying to work with. I don't think that workflow is going to supplant the current techniques anytime soon...
Chris, you have waaaay more experince in this field than me and probably you're right.
I am finding the focussing mechanism of the Arca really great, however tethered to something like twice the size of an iPhone seems to be even better (for me) as it is the sensor image. Only for focussing, not for composition!
As to the live preview - I don't use it. I simply shoot. And I color tag those test shots (to delete them afterwards). It's way faster (for me) and I have the full rez capture to check focus and whatever. I've never understood the usefullness of that live preview thing...
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Chris, you have waaaay more experince in this field than me and probably you're right.
I am finding the focussing mechanism of the Arca really great, however tethered to something like twice the size of an iPhone seems to be even better (for me) as it is the sensor image. Only for focussing, not for composition!
As to the live preview - I don't use it. I simply shoot. And I color tag those test shots (to delete them afterwards). It's way faster (for me) and I have the full rez capture to check focus and whatever. I've never get the usefullness of that live preview thing...
Actually, I do rely on tethering to verify focus... but lately it's been just that Verifying. Luckily I get damn close with My M2 (frequently perfect) and when testing the Rm3d it was dead on. There is some justification for why I am becoming so Arca biased.
: )
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Actually, I do rely on tethering to verify focus...
the beauty of the Rm3d to me is that you can actually leave the laptop at home... at least this is what I would expect from this camera in conjunction with the use of a laser distometer.
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Actually, I do rely on tethering to verify focus... but lately it's been just that Verifying. Luckily I get damn close with My M2 (frequently perfect) and when testing the Rm3d it was dead on. There is some justification for why I am becoming so Arca biased.
: )
Hi Chris,
How is your Kapture Group sliding back? Do you lose shots because of focus shift/mechanical slop?
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I am using the Artec and its sliding back for about half a year with a lot of architectural productions. With a 23, 28, 45, 70 and 135. Yes , I had unsharp pictures, but it was always my fault, it was rainy, I was in a hurry, and so on.
I had less problems than with my 5x7inch camera.
So I can`t understand why ALPA has so much problems...
The shift function of their cameras is the same thing than a sliding back, isn`t it?
7 years ago I was at ALPA and tested their wonderful products for a month.
I had several wihes like a tilt adapter, longer lenses with short barrel, extension tubes and so on, but first of all a sliding back and they told me that they won`t make it ever and I wonder wether they only don`t make it because they want to change their opinion...
Michael
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live view or not... nothing is better than ground glass for composition of architecture images in the field
and for architecture, being almost always between 5meters and inf. you don't need to fully turn the arca focusing ring...
and on a ladder, a computer linked to a camera isn't really handy...
i hope sometimes Kapture group will comes along with a sliding back for Alpa... otherwise, they will loose customers...
I will go with the RM3D for that reason...
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I've never had an issue with losing focus due to the Kapture Group Back. I've heard that sliding backs can vary greatly and maybe got lucky, but I think this unit is really well machined. Also, I believe that the simplicity of a sliding back versus a stitching back helps improve tolerances.
I was shooting furniture in studio last week, and with shots frequently taking 3 hours with lots of back sliding going on I never had an issue with focus.
Sometimes I think it's be nice to have a shimmable back mount (like Alpa) but I luckily don't seem to need one.
-CB
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Hey,
if anyone here is that unhappy with their Alpa system that they are about to sell it - please let me know first
Murray
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Hi Murray,
Peter Bennett advertised the following ALPA gear recently....
Shameful that I haven't used my gorgeous 12SWA since purchasing a MAX 1 year ago but there's no point in it gathering dust so;
ALPA 12 SWA Body only, with vertical shift (+/-25 mm), black rosewood natural handgrips
& ALPA 12 WA/SWA/MAX Leather Neck-strap, ALPA embossed
& boxes, tools etc
USD$3700, shipping included, any taxes buyers responsibility
The camera has been very lightly used and is in beautiful condition.
thanks!
Peter Bennetts
www.peterbennetts.com
Also can you tell me since moving to the P65+ back have you found the 60 sec maximum time a limiting factor for long exposure work?
Regards
Michael
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Also can you tell me since moving to the P65+ back have you found the 60 sec maximum time a limiting factor for long exposure work?
Regards
Michael
Michael,
I still won't rely on the MFDB for long exposure work. By long I mean 5-7 hours...I will still use the 8" x 10" where I can get it in without impacting on the rest f the work.
I have a big trip coming up at the end March where I will get my teeth into the new gear
Also, I am actually interested in lenses for the ALPA only. If anyone is dumping their gear, please PM me.
Cheers
Murray