Photographers -- expect trouble and look for it.
Personal experience:
I spoke with Joe a couple of times, and apart from having a Heck of a lot of knowledge, he is one Heck of a nice guy as well. His line of thinking when it comes to environment is pretty much where I am coming from as well. Ok, this has nothing to do with photography, may be, but I consider it more important alltogether and feel inspired to dedicate a part of my website to these issues as well. Thanks Joe!
With regards to the 28HR, I had one on loan from Sinar and I was utterly disappointed by it's performance. I am not jumping to conclusions, and in fairness, I am not technically educated enough to make a judgement in that respect, but it looks like I had a sausage there as well.
Frankly, it was my first experience with MFDB, so I was insecure as to what degree this might have been down to myself rather than the gear used, originally I blamed myself but in that respect, I guess it was good that Michael saw me operating and using the gear. Naturally, as I hauled a 50k system on loan around the world, I was extremly careful and much slower than "Speedy Gonzales" <grins> with his Hassy, but at the end he did not think it was down to user error or me being new to MFDB. When we looked at a few frames it was darn obvious that the lense did not perform to the level it should have been expected. For what it's worth.
Without going into specific details, I had even more severe troubles concerning the digital back itself, which was unlucky in deed, but the matter of fact was that twice I had a defect unit which lead to loss of files, unusable RAW files. Personally, I felt extremly disheartened by this experience. I thought, well, if I would have made that trip around the world on a payed assignement, no insurance would have covered me for the loss of income, let aside damage to reputation, at least not in Ireland.
Now please, do not get that wrong, I am not on a mission to badmouth MFDB because of my own troublesome experiences, but at the end, I concluded that investing money on such a scale is coming along with a lot of insecurities as to what you get for your bucks. OK, you will have warranty and support, but even that did not convince me, considering the time and efforts involved to get a top notch performing working system without the hassle. I thought, if you are extremly lucky, you get a system that performs out of the box as advertised, but chances are roughly 4:1 against you. So you end up sending gear back, getting stuff fixed, which costs nervs, time and effort, eventually loss of income as well. A lot of hoops to jump through in deed.
Last not least, and I am really curious to know whether this is standard, and to date I have no idea whether this was due to the fact that the Lense I used was a loan only. But is was delivered in a ridiculously flimsy recycled cardboard box with some foam wrapped around it. Ok, this lense system is somewhat different in shape, but I really wondered about the lack of propper protective packaging. Again, I stand to be corrected, may be it is delivered in a protective Pelicase or similiar when one buys it, I have no idea. <shrugs>
To date, I did not invest money into MFDB, and I am looking towards the Leica S2 to find out whether this might be an answer to my struggles, particulary the use in the field. I found it rather distracting to not have a sealed system that can withstand some weather. Then again, that is just me. I love to walk long hours, sometimes I do walks of 8-10 hours and using delicate gear such as a SINAR M with digital back and a set of 3-4 lenses puts considerable weight on my back, together with a DSLR and may be two more lenses. In a rather volatile weather such as we have in Ireland, it certainly keeps the adrenaline going when suddenly some rain comes down, which can happen extremly quick here, and you have to wrap up your setup quicker than Michael shoots. <smile>
I had entire days walking in remote areas setting uo the MFDB, only to wrap it up again before I even could take a single shot. LOL, talk about the myth of Sysiphus.
Thanks a lot for the articles Joe!
Best wishes
Georg Baumann
OCEANVIEWSTUDIO