Large amount of P1 backs for sales

[Bo_Dez]

If the photograph is so boring and non descript that you start noticing how boring the lens rendering is then I think the photo is best deleted and another attempt made.

Or you just have different standards.

If you aren't concerned about the way your photos look then that's your choice.

[Martin Kristiansen]

Or you just have different standards.

Perhaps it has nothing at all to do with standards. Perhaps it has to do with priorities.

[Bo_Dez]

Perhaps it has nothing at all to do with standards. Perhaps it has to do with priorities.

Some need to prioritise both because a good photo, to begin with, is just a base requirement and the bare minimum.

[Jeffery Salter]

Well from my perspective content is king in a photograph, good light is the queen and let's just say, Ansel Adams didn't sit around whining about bokeh or pontificate if he had enough glass in his bag.....  He put on his boots,  loaded his 8 x 10 film holders, gathered his dark cloth, tripod and carried his "Large format" 8 x10 camera up the mountain.

I really wish some of the posters here were able to spend some time amongst the exquisite still lifes and iconic fashion images on display at the Irving Penn Show  in New York City.  It would perhaps provide some solace or balm to their continued quest for more glass in their kits.  At the beginning of the show was his "Medium Format" camera, a Rolliflex 3.5 E3 Twin-Lens Reflex Camera with 75 mm Carl Zeiss Planar Lens (fixed).  It was a very enlightening and inspirational show.  Maybe the quest for the golden grail of glass is misguided.

But hey we are all human, it's easy to look for excuses why our work is not where we would want it to be.  I struggle with this even after being a photographer for a good stretch of time.  My personal challenge is not MF vs. 35mm vs vintage glass vs modern glass......it's seeking to look deeply inside myself to express how I feel about my time on this earth in images.
 

[Bo_Dez]

Well from my perspective content is king in a photograph, good light is the queen and let's just say, Ansel Adams didn't sit around whining about bokeh or pontificate if he had enough glass in his bag.....  He put on his boots,  loaded his 8 x 10 film holders, gathered his dark cloth, tripod and carried his "Large format" 8 x10 camera up the mountain.

I really wish some of the posters here were able to spend some time amongst the exquisite still lifes and iconic fashion images on display at the Irving Penn Show  in New York City.  It would perhaps provide some solace or balm to their continued quest for more glass in their kits.  At the beginning of the show was his "Medium Format" camera, a Rolliflex 3.5 E3 Twin-Lens Reflex Camera with 75 mm Carl Zeiss Planar Lens (fixed).  It was a very enlightening and inspirational show.  Maybe the quest for the golden grail of glass is misguided.

But hey we are all human, it's easy to look for excuses why our work is not where we would want it to be.  I struggle with this even after being a photographer for a good stretch of time.  My personal challenge is not MF vs. 35mm vs vintage glass vs modern glass......it's seeking to look deeply inside myself to express how I feel about my time on this earth in images.
 

I have a Rolleiflex. It has a distinct aesthetic and that is why I use it. All this is not just about having the best quality. It's about having a quality at all that the individual selects for their work. It's a vehicle of expression.

Ansel Adams obsessed over his gear and technique. You're talking about the person who invented the zone system for heaven's sake.

Irving Penn even more so. He spent most of his career shooting large format and the work is next level incredible. Take one look at his work and you understand how obsessed with his process he was and to what degree he went to to achieve it over his career.

Greats like these have spent their entire careers on their quest for their holy grail, they spend years getting their gear down to simple items and processes that reflect their message. But what we end up seeing in an exhibition or book is the distillation of that process.

This whole content is king argument is of course true, no one is arguing it. But taking a good picture for a photographer should just be a given. Aesthetic is an important part of delivering an artists message and some of the world's most famous and well known art is pure aesthetic.

But these discussions always arise in these conversations. Like somehow lens rendering or any sort of aesthetic or technique relates to boring photos. It's ridiculous!

"it's seeking to look deeply inside myself to express how I feel about my time on this earth in images."

I couldn't agree more. This is what it's all about. But the expression of that is often tied up in the process, the aesthetic, as a result of a soup of equipment, media and technique and in using it in order to visually express what that emotion is.

[Jeffery Salter]

Thanks Bo for the enjoyable and insightful post.  I'm sure you have put your time in the trenches...

[BernardLanguillier]

I don’t see how giving oneself one additional variable (lens look) as part of the creative process instead of having to go with a pre-selected neutral one, ends up being described as a sign of lack of focus on image content/meaning/essential quality.

As a H6D-100c/Arca user, I see even less how MF as a whole could not be described as a much worse offender considering how the many constraints resulting from (non mirrorless) MF usage - mostly accepted in exchange for minor values in terms of technical gains - negatively impact focus on content.

Anyway you look at it, a D850/a7rIII frees a lot more of your CPU time to think.

Cheers,
Bernard

[BJL]

My guess is that photography is a small but quite profitable part of the image sensor business.

Best regards
Erik

That was rather clearly the case with CCDs bigger than 36x24mm. The MF camera makers were making do with sensors in different shapes and sizes than their “645” (meaning 56x42mm) systems. For example, those 36x36mm sensors were not to restore the glory of 6x6 square format, as shown by the later abandonment of squares; that shape just made more sensor for machine vission, aerial mapping, X-rays and so on.

Recent stats show that currently, the majority of sensors are made for the cameras in phones, but the trends suggest that the lead might soon be taken by all the small embedded cameras being added to cars, home security systems, fridges, "smart dorbells", etc.

[Martin Kristiansen]

Or you just have different standards.

If you aren't concerned about the way your photos look then that's your choice.

I was pretty much decided that it was pointless arguing this with you but changed my mind. Your reply, and the others that followed got me thinking and caused me to look more closely at my own attitudes, for that I thank you.

Firstly your assumption that I don’t care about how my photos look. I have made my living from photography all my adult life. It’s a fair living, I’m comfortable and don’t have to work too hard. Obviously I need to be concerned how my photos look or I wouldn’t survive as a photographer. If I really didn’t care about look and quality I wouldn’t have bought 5 MFDB over the years, not would I have trained as a sensitometrist in the early 80’s. I also would not have taught myself the zone system nor would I have dragged a Linhoff Super Technica all over the mountains on week long wilderness hikes. I also wouldn’t have travelled to places like New York to see the work of top photographers. Let’s just assume that I do care about how my photos look.

Quality and content. Two important foundations. To me quality is a given. You have to have a certain minimum standard. Then you have content, what are you saying. There must be some balance between these two. Quality can be a bit of a rabbit hole. By that I mean it’s a common thing to see people endlessly chasing quality with the idea that as soon as they get that sorted they will get going on taking great photos. However there is no end to that. At some point you need to say it’s time to get shooting, seriously working. At some point you start to focus on content. Not that you now ignore quality but it takes a back seat to the constant striving after more quality.

Th point I was trying to make and to what you responded with assumptions that I didn’t care about quality is that arguing about lens rendering and being critical of the current generation of top lenses as being flat and clinical was a step too far, at least for me. Diminishing returns is a real thing and for me we have reached that point with this issue.

So that’s my point. Feel free to disagree if your priorities are different. I don’t really care. But it was cool that your attitude about it and towards me caused me to more carefully engage with my own position. I can go out and spend $3000 on lenses with “feel” or I can take a drive up to Namibia or Tanzania or Botswana and with the same money shoot for a few weeks. Who knows, I might even take my old, Rokkor lenses, endless feel with those suckers and I have owned them since 1975

[Rob C]

This thread development really needs its own section, as it has little to do with P1 or any other brand.

Especially with digital, it's my experience that the ultimate image I see on the monitor is the product of how well or otherwise I employ Photoshop to get to the point at which I say STOP!

Film was different, especially when you were working with transparencies. The standard objective was to make an exposure that would preserve the important highlights, and it was up to you to fill in the shadows or not, depending on how important to you that they seemed to be. The next step, processing, was always best left as bog standard as it could be: the entire manufacturing process had been calibrated to match a standard, lab-controlled processing technique. Departing from that was not recommended, unless with E6-type processes where there was sometimes the opportunity to push/pull. Let's not even think about aberrations such as cross-processing or batch variations here.

So, as direct consequence of a standardised process insofar as film itself was concerned, the variables were lens marque (and airport security screening, which if you liked khaki skin tones, was a great optional idea) and lighting quality, which includes filters, colour temperature etc. If you played around with over- or under-exposure that was something else, not a quality of the optics.

Therefore, there was a difference of "native" look available to you depending to a degree on optics selected. Personally, I never knew any professional who owned different sets of lens systems for the same format in order to get different looks for different jobs. Most of us did own different camera formats to handle different types of work. Not the same thing.

As has been stated, the great thing about look lies not in tiny, sophisticated differences that even most snappers can't see in isolation, but in the content of the photograph and, on top of that, the manner in which that content has been handled, which essentially brings us to photographer's style.

In my innocence, I see the advantage of digital MF being the abilty to make larger blow-ups from a single exposure.

Whether or not that means larger than the work requires for a given job is another matter. If I were working professionally today, I would like the idea of shooting as large as possible simply in order to ensure the work had a wider chance of selling to a more demanding market, or to the same one for a different purpose at some future date. (As I have written before, I met the same problem once from using a cellphone to make some private, fun snaps for myself: came the time a would-be client saw them and wanted a large blow-up, I had to turn him away because the dumb originals couldn't stand the degree of enlargement needed.)

I think that there's a good chance that even great pros can be, secretly and unknowingly, fanboys of some marque or the other...

[Bo_Dez]

I was pretty much decided that it was pointless arguing this with you but changed my mind. Your reply, and the others that followed got me thinking and caused me to look more closely at my own attitudes, for that I thank you.

Firstly your assumption that I don’t care about how my photos look. I have made my living from photography all my adult life. It’s a fair living, I’m comfortable and don’t have to work too hard. Obviously I need to be concerned how my photos look or I wouldn’t survive as a photographer. If I really didn’t care about look and quality I wouldn’t have bought 5 MFDB over the years, not would I have trained as a sensitometrist in the early 80’s. I also would not have taught myself the zone system nor would I have dragged a Linhoff Super Technica all over the mountains on week long wilderness hikes. I also wouldn’t have travelled to places like New York to see the work of top photographers. Let’s just assume that I do care about how my photos look.

Quality and content. Two important foundations. To me quality is a given. You have to have a certain minimum standard. Then you have content, what are you saying. There must be some balance between these two. Quality can be a bit of a rabbit hole. By that I mean it’s a common thing to see people endlessly chasing quality with the idea that as soon as they get that sorted they will get going on taking great photos. However there is no end to that. At some point you need to say it’s time to get shooting, seriously working. At some point you start to focus on content. Not that you now ignore quality but it takes a back seat to the constant striving after more quality.

Th point I was trying to make and to what you responded with assumptions that I didn’t care about quality is that arguing about lens rendering and being critical of the current generation of top lenses as being flat and clinical was a step too far, at least for me. Diminishing returns is a real thing and for me we have reached that point with this issue.

So that’s my point. Feel free to disagree if your priorities are different. I don’t really care. But it was cool that your attitude about it and towards me caused me to more carefully engage with my own position. I can go out and spend $3000 on lenses with “feel” or I can take a drive up to Namibia or Tanzania or Botswana and with the same money shoot for a few weeks. Who knows, I might even take my old, Rokkor lenses, endless feel with those suckers and I have owned them since 1975

The exact point you made was that someone's work must be boring if they noticed the lens rendering and that they should delete their work and start again. That is far more assumption, ignorance, arrogance in one statement than I could pass up and I'm glad my reaction has challenged that.

It does reveal more about your own standards than the person you are judging. By standards, I also mean priorities. A photographer can take a great photo they are happy with and still be disappointed with how they captured it, what lens or what format they used etc.

You would rather go on a trip than buy a lens, but some would rather do both. I have spent 10K on one lens and I have then spent 10K on a personal project. I bought the lens for the personal project because what it does contributes to what I want to say. It’s part of the recipe. The point is that photography can be all these things, they aren’t mutually exclusive. Boring lens rendering doesn’t only exist in boring photos and to a photographer who is disappointed in the way their picture looks it’s often enough for them to change it.

The search to find equipment that represents your voice could easily be described, by some, especially an onlooker, as a rabbit hole. It is potentially that. You can easily get lost in it. That’s sometimes part of the journey though and that doesn't make it a fruitless journey by default.

Every artistic pursuit has the same journey. A poet can spend weeks searching for the right words to say something that is important to them, they can and do feel unhappy with what they have and feel a need to change it. A painter can search endlessly for new ways to paint and release their vision, tweak, change their style, a musician can endlessly search for their instrument, adjusting, tinkering and customising in a never ending pursuit to get things just right. Even Tiger Woods tried to change his swing when he didn't need to. Neither of those things makes their work or pursuit "boring" or something that should be deleted. Throughout history the greatest artists that have ever been have been deeply obsessed about these things and never stop searching and changing and adjusting until it is right for them. You just have to look at how much the greatest ever painters searched for their style and changed it throughout their careers. The goal posts are always moving and the game is always changing because we are always changing.

Reading your statement again, the very fact you say they should delete it and start again, tends to suggest that in the process of disagreeing you are actually agreeing anyway.

[fredjeang2]

Every artistic pursuit has the same journey. A poet can spend weeks searching for the right words to say something that is important to them, they can and do feel unhappy with what they have and feel a need to change it. A painter can search endlessly for new ways to paint and release their vision, tweak, change their style, a musician can endlessly search for their instrument, adjusting, tinkering and customising in a never ending pursuit to get things just right. Even Tiger Woods tried to change his swing when he didn't need to. Neither of those things makes their work or pursuit "boring" or something that should be deleted. Throughout history the greatest artists that have ever been have been deeply obsessed about these things and never stop searching and changing and adjusting until it is right for them. You just have to look at how much the greatest ever painters searched for their style and changed it throughout their careers. The goal posts are always moving and the game is always changing because we are always changing.

This is absolutly true. But I think that this very same truth is a two sides of a coin
And precisely where the trap can stand.
Let's take a Zidane. Those guys started to play and improve their skills under the availavle conditions, not the ideal ones..
Most didn't have the cash to just buy decent boots. They trained on the streets, so to say.
They played under the worst conditions with what they have. They endlessly trained.
They were discovered because they were good, and because they were
Good only, they growned; then comes into the play the reffinements,
The quest for little details. Not first but as a logical result of their excellence/experience.

Nowdays, many peoole put the second ingredient first, thinking it's going to drive
Them to good. If one can't make good pics with an Holga, it's not going
To happen with an Hasselblad.
If the images are crap with the kit lens, they will even be crappier with a 10000 bucks one.
The problem is not the search for fine tuning and get the right equipment for a look.
It is the when that matters.

Actually, many people don't even have a clear clue of what lenses would they need to acheive
A particular vision because for that to happens, they would have first to know
What their artistic vision is, also to know the specialness of the lenses in question,
And finaly have trained eyes to be able to appreciate subtle differences.
That requires a lot of previous field work and experience, many don't have.

Things can not be upside down.

[BernardLanguillier]

P1 paid them a premium to be first I'm sure. The SONY Marketing department are respecting that for now.

Maybe, but then again the 100mp is not likely to be very exclusive for long... as is proven by this piece of news:

https://ponfmultibackcamera.wordpress.com/2018/05/10/ponf-x-sony-update-big-things-to-come/

I have low expectations about the actual product, but at least it shows that pretty much anyone can buy these sensors easily. There is no doubt whatsoever that Hassy and Fuji have had their hands on them for quite some time.

Cheers,
Bernard

[eronald]

Maybe, but then again the 100mp is not likely to be very exclusive for long... as is proven by this piece of news:

https://ponfmultibackcamera.wordpress.com/2018/05/10/ponf-x-sony-update-big-things-to-come/

I have low expectations about the actual product, but at least it shows that pretty much anyone can buy these sensors easily. There is no doubt whatsoever that Hassy and Fuji have had their hands on them for quite some time.

Cheers,
Bernard

Sony seem to be getting very aggressive about selling sensors.
It's possible that Phase gets a custom CFA.

On the other hand all the smarts that make computational photography possible in phones are not necessarily there for MF sensors, so I think Sony is handicapping anyone who wants to compete with the A7RIV.

Edmund

Edmund

[BernardLanguillier]

On the other hand all the smarts that make computational photography possible in phones are not necessarily there for MF sensors, so I think Sony is handicapping anyone who wants to compete with the A7RIV.

The main practical issue with MF is focusing. This is were the best DSLRs with eye tracking (D5/D850) and mirrorless (Sony only for now) are killing them.

It is very rare to get more actual resolution with a 100mp back compared to a D850/a7RIII on anything that it not perfectly static.

I suspected it before owning one of these and I was 100% right.

Cheers,
Bernard

[eronald]

The main practical issue with MF is focusing. This is were the best DSLRs with eye tracking (D5/D850) and mirrorless (Sony only for now) are killing them.

It is very rare to get more actual resolution with a 100mp back compared to a D850/a7RIII on anything that it not perfectly static.

I suspected it before owning one of these and I was 100% right.

Cheers,
Bernard

Yes, and I think the MF sensor Sony sells do not necessarily have the necessary circuitry for PDAF and eye-focus, but I may be wrong on that. Even when good fast focus is implemented at sensor level, the somewhat slower to move lenses will still be an issue.

Edmund

[henrikfoto]

The main practical issue with MF is focusing. This is were the best DSLRs with eye tracking (D5/D850) and mirrorless (Sony only for now) are killing them.

It is very rare to get more actual resolution with a 100mp back compared to a D850/a7RIII on anything that it not perfectly static.

I suspected it before owning one of these and I was 100% right.

Cheers,
Bernard

I have too agree 100%  !!!!

[pschefz]

The main practical issue with MF is focusing. This is were the best DSLRs with eye tracking (D5/D850) and mirrorless (Sony only for now) are killing them.

It is very rare to get more actual resolution with a 100mp back compared to a D850/a7RIII on anything that it not perfectly static.

I suspected it before owning one of these and I was 100% right.

Cheers,
Bernard

i have to say that the AF with the GFX so far is good....in a different world compared to H system or phase but obviously also not comparable to sony/nikon....but it is pretty solid somewhere there in the middle, which makes it good enough for moving objects....unfortunately the performance also depends on the lens....so far i find the zoom the best...the 45 and 120 are ok but definitely behind the zoom, i havent tried the other lenses but so far my own experience is not different from other people....
overall it is easily comparable to early dslrs and systems i used to work with years ago which weren't great but overall did not frustrate me because of missed frames....maybe it is because i used to work with slower systems (and grew up with manual focus) that i find the GFX perfectly workable.....as amazing as the sony/nikons are, i tend to get lost completely depending on eye AF and such and end up actually loosing frames because i almost panic if the AF does get lost...
the best thing about the GFX focus system is that when it is on...it's ON....i have had shoots with the sony when i trusted the points completely only to find out later that the point actually was on the tip of the nose and not the eye.....

[BernardLanguillier]

i have to say that the AF with the GFX so far is good....in a different world compared to H system or phase but obviously also not comparable to sony/nikon....but it is pretty solid somewhere there in the middle, which makes it good enough for moving objects....

Indeed. I should have written "non mirrorless" MF.

Cheers,
Bernard

[ErikKaffehr]

Hi,

I would say that CDAF is accurate, with exception to focus shift related issues, but may need lenses built for CDAF.

I am not really surprised by your findings. But it is not good that you needed to spend something like 30k$US to find out.

Best regards
Erik

Indeed. I should have written "non mirrorless" MF.

Cheers,
Bernard