Interesting Q&A from a fashion pro on giving up his Phase One system.

[Endeavour]

isnt this just a "Man bites dog!" story?

[ErikKaffehr]

No,

I don't think so, because I see a lot of that. Also, it makes a lot of sense. It depends a lot on the lenses.

I posted a comparison between two of my Hasselblad (Zeiss) lenses on the P45+ compared with my Sony macro, here:
http://forum.luminous-landscape.com/index.php?topic=107680.0

Not a lot of difference and mostly coming from different white balance. So, I will not shoot with my Hasselblad for image quality reasons.

The A7rII is faster to use, can take almost any lens on the planet and has a very flexible AF. It also weights less and has better shadow detail and real high ISO capability. Very efficient gear.

So, why I keep the Hasselblad? I like shooting with it, just that I will not do it very often. Also, I keep all my Hasselblad lenses as they are perfectly usable on A7rII and I want to be able use them the way Victor intended to.

In a sense, I am doing a switch as I have been shooting MFD and 24x36 about fifty-fifty. But since I mostly travel by air the Blad stays at home. The A7rII that I use gives me some stuff I value very high, like tilt and shift.

There is also some latest stuff is greatest plaything effect involved.

Best regards
Erik

 

isnt this just a "Man bites dog!" story?

[BernardLanguillier]

In my view that key differentiator that will settle it all is AF, in particular eye detection.

Medium format is mostly a manual focus world as soon as the subjects moves a little bit/is away from the centre of the frame. However good the best MF lenses are, however good the Otus range is, the reality is that they aren't reliable tools when you need to get a single shot perfectly focused on the eye of the subject. I shoot the Otus a lot and I know it can be done, but not 100% of the time. MF viewfinders help increase the success rate, but it won't still be anything near 100%.



In my view the current DSLRs aren't reliable either when the need is to get an eye perfectly in focus every single time as soon as subject doesn't take a major portion of the frame. We'll see what the D5/1dxII can do on this front, but this is were on sensor AF has a unbeatable advantage that is IMHO by far the most valuable asset the mirrorless cameras have in terms of solving real world photographic challenges. The Sony a7rII and the new 85mm f1.4 may end up being the best option out there for all things fashion/wedding/on location portrait/...

As a amateur who can afford to miss some images as long as I get some great ones, using the best lenses money can buy is the easy pick, but I think working pros will favour reliability over a few % of look most of the time.

Cheers,
Bernard

[eronald]

Bernard, I agree focus is important. Hassy is the only MF camera with usable off-centre focus, that is the killer feature of the H4 and H5 which makes me want to own one after selling my Phamiya. It seems to really solve the offset issue in focus and recompose, people here have commented that it nails the shots.  But main-sensor focus is the silver bullet. Videographers love the Canon dual pixel AF. I think we will see main-sensor AF on the next gen of Sony MF sensors; it might even already be in some current sensors, not enabled. When main sensor AF hits, every MF camera will have fast and rock solid focus.

Btw, I hate my D4 but it does focus the 85/1.4 well, and my old  pro Canons allow use of the 85/1.2 wide open, but the big issue is that one needs to figure out *exactly* where the focus sensor really is in the viewfinder. Obviously, at portrait range the DOF is about the depth between the front of the eyelashes and the side of the eye. The lateral offset between the indicator and the AF point translates into trouble. I think beauty photographers are very very good at getting focus on the part of the eye they want to show.


Edmund

In my view that key differentiator that will settle it all is AF, in particular eye detection.

Medium format is mostly a manual focus world as soon as the subjects moves a little bit/is away from the centre of the frame. However good the best MF lenses are, however good the Otus range is, the reality is that they aren't reliable tools when you need to get a single shot perfectly focused on the eye of the subject. I shoot the Otus a lot and I know it can be done, but not 100% of the time. MF viewfinders help increase the success rate, but it won't still be anything near 100%.



In my view the current DSLRs aren't reliable either when the need is to get an eye perfectly in focus every single time as soon as subject doesn't take a major portion of the frame. We'll see what the D5/1dxII can do on this front, but this is were on sensor AF has a unbeatable advantage that is IMHO by far the most valuable asset the mirrorless cameras have in terms of solving real world photographic challenges. The Sony a7rII and the new 85mm f1.4 may end up being the best option out there for all things fashion/wedding/on location portrait/...

As a amateur who can afford to miss some images as soon as I get some great ones, using the best lenses money can buy is the easy pick, but I think working pros will favour reliability over a few % of look most of the time.

Cheers,
Bernard

[ErikKaffehr]

Hi,

I don't think focusing the MFD manually is that easy. I have a Hasselblad 555/ELD withe a PM 5 finder which I use with a Zeiss 3X monocular for focusing and shot at f/11, mostly.

It is possible that newer cameras have much better viewfinder, but brighter does not always mean more easy to focus.

Some cameras may have more accurate AF than others. How accurate AF works depends on many things. If you look at Canon the 5DIII and the 1DX paired with latest generation lenses have very good focusing accuracy, all that from Lensrentals.

Sony A7rII combines on sensor phase detection (for speed) with contrast sensing AF (for accuracy). DSLRs cannot do that with mirror down.

Best regards
Erik

In my view that key differentiator that will settle it all is AF, in particular eye detection.

Medium format is mostly a manual focus world as soon as the subjects moves a little bit/is away from the centre of the frame. However good the best MF lenses are, however good the Otus range is, the reality is that they aren't reliable tools when you need to get a single shot perfectly focused on the eye of the subject. I shoot the Otus a lot and I know it can be done, but not 100% of the time. MF viewfinders help increase the success rate, but it won't still be anything near 100%.


Cheers,
Bernard

[Manoli]

However good the best MF lenses are, however good the Otus range is, the reality is that they aren't reliable tools when you need to get a single shot perfectly focused on the eye of the subject ...

And Jim Kasson, I suspect, will agree with you ... Otus & Nikkor focus shift

[gavincato]

Hi,

I don't think focusing the MFD manually is that easy. I have a Hasselblad 555/ELD withe a PM 5 finder which I use with a Zeiss 3X monocular for focusing and shot at f/11, mostly.

I just shot the majority of a wedding location shoot with a contax zeiss 80/2 mounted on a 645z manual focus all day, in focus percentage easily 9/10. I find it easy, but I suspect it'll vary wildly from person to person especially with the age of your eyes

[eronald]

I just shot the majority of a wedding location shoot with a contax zeiss 80/2 mounted on a 645z manual focus all day, in focus percentage easily 9/10. I find it easy, but I suspect it'll vary wildly from person to person especially with the age of your eyes

On the other hand an MF finder certainly helps when your eyes get old

Anybody here want a cheap camera with a wonderful finder, I recommend the old Canon 1Ds3 btw - best finder I've ever used, about $1K on the second hand market, and superb focus. 

Edmund

[ErikKaffehr]

Hi,

Yes, very good stuff. A great reason to use live view at shooting aperture for focusing.

Just to say, decent focus and critical focus is not exactly the same thing.

Best regards
Erik

And Jim Kasson, I suspect, will agree with you ... Otus & Nikkor focus shift

[synn]

Becuase every action has an equal and opposite reaction, another pro traded his Nikon system in for an MFD kit.

http://blog.mingthein.com/2016/02/22/the-switch/

Discuss.

[ErikKaffehr]

Hi Synn,

Thanks for the link. It is an interesting posting.

A lot of things going on these days. Personally, I feel that low end MFD is more affordable than before. So many more folks can try. At the same time smaller systems get more capable.

Personally, I would say that CMOS based MFD make a lot of sense, and Hasselblad seems to have taken a new direction with new management. A more 'back to origins' focus.

I don't think anybody should switch to either system, but it is nice to have a lot of different options.

Best regards
Erik

Becuase every action has an equal and opposite reaction, another pro traded his Nikon system in for an MFD kit.

http://blog.mingthein.com/2016/02/22/the-switch/

Discuss.

[Rob C]

That's an interesting Jim Casson link on focus shift; thanks for it.

But there's a problem: and it ain't the equipment.

We all used whatever was the best we could afford, back then, and nobody, clients included, had any problems accepting or appreciating what we did for them with our cameras. And focus shift ain't nuttin' new.

Today, with the ability to pixel-peep, we have (some of us) become obsessive with stuff that, in practice, makes very little difference to our daily work. Huge posters were comfortably made from 35mm; chemist and beauty shops displayed great ads for makeup and perfume shot on 6x6 or 6x7 and also 135; the world worked just fine. And in the end, the photographs were far more convincing than the stuff doing the same job today.

This madness over ultimate detail loses the point of photography that sells product: it's about mood, not sticking pins into pores that have been blurred, magically, out of existence. Go anywhere near those beauty shop point-of-sales posters and you want to back off: not because of grain - there isn't any - but because of the utter falseness of what hits you in the eye. You don't see an impossibly beautiful human, you see a plastic, smeared-in-colour robot.

Yes, as for those jobs that required 4x5 or even 8x10, some of these ultimate detail/focus things are perhaps important, but don't forget that those LF cameras were also focussed stopped well down, and under the protection of a large cloth over the head. Can't say I noticed many whisky or cognac ads that looked out of focus.

I would argue photography has, due to this obsession with detail, gone from the beautiful into the horrific.

Makes me think of some of the rest of the crazy things science is doing these days... a self-absorbed madness into which so many feel compelled to buy.

Rob C

[synn]

Is it just a coincidence that by the end of his post announcing his switch to Hasselblad he is made a Hasselblad Ambassador??
Methinks not....

Probably, but that's no different from what often happens in the Canikony realm either.

[eronald]

Rob, I think you are jealous that the retoucher matters as much as the photographer

Edmund

That's an interesting Jim Casson link on focus shift; thanks for it.

But there's a problem: and it ain't the equipment.

We all used whatever was the best we could afford, back then, and nobody, clients included, had any problems accepting or appreciating what we did for them with our cameras. And focus shift ain't nuttin' new.

Today, with the ability to pixel-peep, we have (some of us) become obsessive with stuff that, in practice, makes very little difference to our daily work. Huge posters were comfortably made from 35mm; chemist and beauty shops displayed great ads for makeup and perfume shot on 6x6 or 6x7 and also 135; the world worked just fine. And in the end, the photographs were far more convincing than the stuff doing the same job today.

This madness over ultimate detail loses the point of photography that sells product: it's about mood, not sticking pins into pores that have been blurred, magically, out of existence. Go anywhere near those beauty shop point-of-sales posters and you want to back off: not because of grain - there isn't any - but because of the utter falseness of what hits you in the eye. You don't see an impossibly beautiful human, you see a plastic, smeared-in-colour robot.

Yes, as for those jobs that required 4x5 or even 8x10, some of these ultimate detail/focus things are perhaps important, but don't forget that those LF cameras were also focussed stopped well down, and under the protection of a large cloth over the head. Can't say I noticed many whisky or cognac ads that looked out of focus.

I would argue photography has, due to this obsession with detail, gone from the beautiful into the horrific.

Makes me think of some of the rest of the crazy things science is doing these days... a self-absorbed madness into which so many feel compelled to buy.

Rob C

[Rob C]

Rob, I think you are jealous that the retoucher matters as much as the photographer

Edmund

Hardly; I think what matters is that the final result often sucks.

I had no love for the grunge period, but at least it had an ugly honesty about it, even if the some of the actors were anything but poor.

In fact, I have often said that one of the few things one can teach in the photo world is how to manipulate Photoshop. It's a wonderful tool, and I think we all should be good at it; the problem, as ever, is the human one: knowing when enough is enough.

Which seems good advice for me, right now!

;-)

Rob

[ErikKaffehr]

Hi Rob,

Your thoughts are certainly read worthy. With digital it is very easy to study microscopic detail in images, so any imperfection in technique or subject will show.

In film times it was much more difficult to check out tiny detail.

On the other hand, with digital we can also easily print large.

I made a small experiment this weekend. For my Sony A7rII I bought a kit lens, knowing that there is no great standard zoom for it yet. Sony released a new 24-70/2.8 that may be OK, the proof of that is in the future.  That kit lens is truly not great. I decided to take a street shot taken with it, do some "upright correction", sharpen adequately and print in A2 size.

The print that came out didn't blow my socks off, but it was quite acceptable. So, even that I would say clearly substandard lens could produce an acceptable quality A2-size print.

That may or may not our quest for optimal sharpness in some perspective.

On the other hand. Printing 70x100 cm, or so, I would rather have the best image I can to start from.

Best regards
Erik

Best regards
Erik

That's an interesting Jim Casson link on focus shift; thanks for it.

But there's a problem: and it ain't the equipment.

We all used whatever was the best we could afford, back then, and nobody, clients included, had any problems accepting or appreciating what we did for them with our cameras. And focus shift ain't nuttin' new.

Today, with the ability to pixel-peep, we have (some of us) become obsessive with stuff that, in practice, makes very little difference to our daily work. Huge posters were comfortably made from 35mm; chemist and beauty shops displayed great ads for makeup and perfume shot on 6x6 or 6x7 and also 135; the world worked just fine. And in the end, the photographs were far more convincing than the stuff doing the same job today.

This madness over ultimate detail loses the point of photography that sells product: it's about mood, not sticking pins into pores that have been blurred, magically, out of existence. Go anywhere near those beauty shop point-of-sales posters and you want to back off: not because of grain - there isn't any - but because of the utter falseness of what hits you in the eye. You don't see an impossibly beautiful human, you see a plastic, smeared-in-colour robot.

Yes, as for those jobs that required 4x5 or even 8x10, some of these ultimate detail/focus things are perhaps important, but don't forget that those LF cameras were also focussed stopped well down, and under the protection of a large cloth over the head. Can't say I noticed many whisky or cognac ads that looked out of focus.

I would argue photography has, due to this obsession with detail, gone from the beautiful into the horrific.

Makes me think of some of the rest of the crazy things science is doing these days... a self-absorbed madness into which so many feel compelled to buy.

Rob C

[eronald]

You know, I'm just a guy, with little appreciation for beauty and very few editorial shoots under my belt. As Synn has often pointed out, I truly have little photo experience, even less natural ability, and certainly no idea of esthetics.

Recently I saw a lady friend peruse a multipage editorial in a glossy fashion magazine. My friend complained about the dreadful skin of the girl, the imperfect retouch; I pointed out that the bikini bottom peeking out from under the skirt looked quite full of bananas, and that the model had a very obvious Adam apple.

Times have changed. Nowadays fashion designers seem to mostly prefer working with female flat thin models with no breasts and possibly a plug or ex-plug down there rather than a socket, while famous female stars and 40 year old "supermodels" expect to be retouched into fictional ageless plastic-coated angels with endless legs, no stomach, and not a vein in their eye or a hair on their body or minor pimple on their face. Except possibly for the "glamour" crowd, most of the human types in these images are now quite far from 50s "convention". Marilyn was "only" 5ft 5" and a bit curvy, she probably would find it hard to buy a dress off the rack over here these days, and certainly wouldn't be able to fit a standard show size.


I'm not saying that things are better or worse than they used to be, but that a lot of the esthetics someone my age would employ are simply completely out of date. A glance at Miley Cyrus in her metamorphosis from Disney to now will convince most of us that the aspirational ideal young woman has really changed over the past 10 years. I'm sure younger photographers like Synn are better qualified to take the new style pictures, because they get it.

Edmund

Hardly; I think what matters is that the final result often sucks.



I had no love for the grunge period, but at least it had an ugly honesty about it, even if the some of the actors were anything but poor.

In fact, I have often said that one of the few things one can teach in the photo world is how to manipulate Photoshop. It's a wonderful tool, and I think we all should be good at it; the problem, as ever, is the human one: knowing when enough is enough.

Which seems good advice for me, right now!

;-)

Rob

[Rob C]

Yesterday, at lunch in a bar in Pollensa, I came across Spanish Glamour, a publication I hadn't looked at before. It surprised me in several ways: first of all, the format was ridiculously tiny: something like the Reader's Digest of the 50s used to be (do they still exist?), which utterly destroyed both the feeling of holding something valuable in the hand (or, in this case, on the table mat) as well as the hoped-for impact of the contained imagery.

On the positive side, the worst excesses of retouching didn't actually show that much because the images were all too small. However, what did show was the value of a more moderate makeup technique and lighting: Tom Munro had a spread on Julia Roberts (I think this was a pre-Xmas issue) and in the images, she looked perfectly natural and ever so attractive. This, to me, shows that brilliant people on both sides of a camera don't need the levels of fakery some imagine.

I hadn't time, between meal and end of coffee, for a longer linger, so what the rest of the magazine offered awaits another visit; I'm sure the magazine won't walk. We do things slowly out here when we can...

Rob C

[landscapephoto]

Becuase every action has an equal and opposite reaction, another pro traded his Nikon system in for an MFD kit.

http://blog.mingthein.com/2016/02/22/the-switch/

Discuss.

I don't think Ming Thein is an useful example for this discussion. You are naming him a "pro", but he is not really living from the sales of pictures as a fashion or product photographer would. As far as I understand, his main business is his blog which serves to drive amateurs to his workshops. Therefore, when he is writing he got a new camera, the criteria for choosing it is not the photographic quality of the camera itself, but rather whether the possession of that camera will let more amateurs consider him a competent teacher. Last but not least, the last paragraph of that post makes it clear that he is in a business relationship with the manufacturer.

[ErikKaffehr]

Hi,

Thanks for making that point.

Personally, I don't really care. I have some experience of MFD, after shooting MFD for two and a half year. Admittedly, my gear is not up to date, I am shooting with a Hasselblad 555/ELD and a P45+ back.

What I feel is that MFD is quite expensive and a bit over marketed. There is little doubt that even elderly MFD systems, like mine, can achieve very good image quality. But, that image quality comes at a high cost. My latest 24x36mm system also offers great image quality, at a much lower cost than a used MFD system and offers far more flexibility.

Just to make clear, I really think that high end MFD makes a lot of sense if you need the megapixels. But, leaving out the megapixels I don't feel that MFD offers a magic quality.

The one area where MFD really shines in my view is short flash sync times with leaf shutters.

In a sense, I also feel that 24x36mm has grown up. We have sensors with 36-50 MP, great choice of lenses from camera makers, Zeiss, Sigma, Samyang, Tamron et al. Add to that we have great DR, high ISO, live view etc.…

On the other hand, MFD now also uses CMOS-sensors, pretty similar to what we would have on a Nikon or a Sony. Under optimal conditions a larger sensor is always better than a smaller sensor. Under those optimal conditions an MFD equipment will always have a small, but possibly significant, advantage of smaller sensors.

The main advantage? Resolution and MTF.  Other than that? Twice the usable ISO with twice the sensor size, else 'naye'.

Some knowledgable folks go from MFD to smaller formats. Some small format users go to MFD. It is nice to have alternatives.

Best regards
Erik

I don't think Ming Thein is an useful example for this discussion. You are naming him a "pro", but he is not really living from the sales of pictures as a fashion or product photographer would. As far as I understand, his main business is his blog which serves to drive amateurs to his workshops. Therefore, when he is writing he got a new camera, the criteria for choosing it is not the photographic quality of the camera itself, but rather whether the possession of that camera will let more amateurs consider him a competent teacher. Last but not least, the last paragraph of that post makes it clear that he is in a business relationship with the manufacturer.