My Leaf Disaster

[geesbert]

I actually thought I wouldn't make this public, but too many promises were broken and I was obviously taken for a ride, so here is my story:

I am  commercial food and people photographer with international clients. For exemple I am shooting the Burge King campaigns for many European countries. I was happily shooting my Canon 1dsmk3 setup with tse lenses, but never stopped looking at large format cameras. last Photokina I went round to check all the manufacturers out and finally went for Linhof. they told me the adapterplate was ready to ship within 2 weeks of photokina. I managed to acquire a 679 at a really good price. Got a bunch of Rodenstock and Schneider lenses for it, was ready to get started.

after checking out all MF backs I decided to go for Leaf. My main reason was the least pathetic live view, the biggest screen (which still sucks, btw.) and that there was no need for a wake-up cable.

I intended to buy it with a RZ, my favourite MF camera to date, but my Leaf dealer persuaded me to go for the AFI, which me stupid idiot did.  I signed the Leasing contract (the first leasing I took up, every piece of equipment before that I bought with cash) and thought i ould be up and running in a couple of days. unfortunately the camera wasn't available for a couple of weeks, but that didn't bother me. when it came, the FW cable was broken, which took me days to find out, as the dealer wasn't available.

then I found out that the adapterplate wasn't ready at all, once they even told me there wouldn't be a plate for the AFI. at that time this wasn't the biggest concern for me, I had the AFI camera to shoot with. very quickly I realised my computer hardware wasn't up to the task, as was my data capacity, so a quick 5000€ investment solved that. anyway shortly before christmas i finally got the plate and was ready to roll

I did a few weeks of testing to find out, that my keeper rate was close to zero. Available light handheld could only be done it broad daylight, anything below f5.6 and 1/125 was mostly unusable. cranking up the iso wasn't an option. then suddenly there appeard a lot of strange noise on the images, so the camera went back to leaf, I got a loaner. A few weeks later the camera came back. Using Lightroom for Leaf files was extremely slow, their own software felt like KX Spectrum. the life view really sucked, my food stylists really hated it.

I nearly blew one job, because of the araund 400 pictures we shot only about 5 had the plane of focus where we wanted it. thanks god we had shot a few frames with my canon, so we could save the day.

My main problem was focus. I gave up on AF pretty quickly. I bought a Splitscreen and the prism (together 1200€), but things didn't improve.  I built a test setup an discovered that the camera was backfocusing by about 5cm to a meter. so the camera went back to leaf and was returned only to find out that the problem was persisting.

it was march by then, about half a year after photokina. I kept on paying my leasing rates...

I nearly stopped being friendly, but up to then I had the feeling everyone involved really tried to solve the problem.

One day Leaf send someone from Belgium to my studio here in Munich to get this resolved one and for all. I showed him the problem and he confirmed. we tried it with his camera (an AFI-7-2) and found the same problem. he was showing this camera around Europe for a few weeks and nonone had seen it. Sensor and focus screen was apparently not on the same plane. and it was not only my camera showing this.

unfortunaltely he couldn't take the camera back with him, as this was a colaboration between Leaf, Kodak, Schneider and F&H, so he first had to figure out who is to blame.

My dealer kept on telling me that he had sold many of these systems an non had developed any of these problems. I had estimated maybe 100 cameras sold, but then he slipped that mine was number 7!

After a couple of days Leaf offered me to upgrade to the AFI-7/2 for free or fully refund my purchase price. I went for the refund.
The one thing they didn't tell me that they would refund the price to my leasing company, not to me. The leasing company (ABC-Finance) couldn't care less, once I even saw am Email about me being stupid enough not to read the contract properly and therefore I could stand on my head and wouldn't get anything back.

a side note: a few weeks ago ABC-Finance sent me a happy grinning birthday greeting card, looking forward doing business again...

Mr. Karatchian of Leaf promised  me personally in my face I'd get my money back, but a couple of thousand Euros is still unpaid.

Emails were unanswered, calls dismissed. only once when I called from a friend's number I reached him. a few more promises then nothing.

meanwhile leaf went belly up, you know the story. I sold most of the stuff at much lower prices than what i paid for. alltogether this experience had cost me close to 10.000€, plus estimated 30 working days and nearly a client.

my conclusion: I was very stupid.

Stupidity no. 1: I definitely didn't need MF Digital. the Quality gain is too small to deal with all the hassle. Canon 1dsMK3 files are way big enough for any CMYK needs, even 18/1 posters can be done easily.

Stupidity no.2: dont believe delivery promises. only buy what is really available.

Stupidity no. 3: don't lease. I am kind of glad I got out of my leasing contract with only a couple of thousand short. otherwise I would still pay a lot of money for the next three years for an obsolete system.

Stupidity  no.4: Don't be so nice if people fuck you up. If you deal with contract-pushing finance monkey, only communicate in written form, signed for. A spoken word doesn't mean a lot to them.


DON'T BELIEVE THE HYPE; ONLY BELIEVE WHAT YOU SEE.


P.S.: I still have a bag-full of aftermarket batteries for the Leaf, an really small aftermarket charger and a sync-cable. I'll swap it for a nice, decorative print of your work, whatever....preferably taken with a digital back.

[bigalbest]

Sounds like you are the one to make some serious mistakes here. It also sounds like Leaf did their part offering to replace or refund, something they didn't have to do. My question would be why did you buy into such an expensive system if you were unaware of it's capabilities and limitations? Next time do your homework first.

[geesbert]

why do you think they didn't have to repair their obviously faulty product? And then, after going back to them twice and still not working properly they offered a refund, which never showed up at my door.  Don't you think I can expect a camera to focus if I spend that much money?

if you reread my post I am not blaming Leaf for not trying, rather for not keeping their promises. And mostly I blame myself for being so stupid.

[lisa_r]

Bigalbest, do you not think that the ability to focus should be assumed when purchasing a $15,000 camera? Sheesh.

[BernardLanguillier]

Sounds like you are the one to make some serious mistakes here. It also sounds like Leaf did their part offering to replace or refund, something they didn't have to do. My question would be why did you buy into such an expensive system if you were unaware of it's capabilities and limitations? Next time do your homework first.

How could anyone read the story above and think for a quarter of a second that the buyer is at fault?

Cheers,
Bernard

[GiorgioNiro]

Thanks Geesbert, very informative.
Reminds me how much I like my 1DsIII, and the files it produces.

[bradleygibson]

Interesting story--I have some painful experiences waiting for (and buying alternatives to) a promised Phase P45+ on Hy6 for a year and a half.

Similar cash paid and lost, only to wake up and realize "it ain't comin', stupid".

Now, if I can't buy it, it doesn't exist.

--

Not that it matters now, but, I had the Hy6 for a time, and I did not have any problems with the AF.  It's slow and noisy compared to Canon but the AF did work well for me...

[teddillard]

Interesting, and painful cautionary tale, in the very least.  

I can only say, it's not the first time I've heard focus issues on that system, and, well, "fatal" ones.  I've know a few people who've gone to the hassey system as a result...  

This makes a strong case for a rental "try before you buy", IMO.  When I was at EPL we would really push that- and refund a major part of the rental regardless of what the customer ended up buying, unless of course he bought it elsewhere.    Very often, the camera drives well in the shop, but on a job it's a different story.  I never felt like I could really say I knew a camera until I shot with it on a job.  (thus, our "shoot diary" segments on the site...)

It also makes a case for working with a great dealer...  I'm going back to re-read, but it sounds like your dealer should have stepped in and busted a few heads- and also that they didn't take care to make sure it was the right fit for you- always the best policy, but especially important on a pricetag like that.

[H1/A75 Guy]

My main problem was focus. I gave up on AF pretty quickly. I bought a Splitscreen and the prism (together 1200€), but things didn't improve.  I built a test setup an discovered that the camera was backfocusing by about 5cm to a meter. so the camera went back to leaf and was returned only to find out that the problem was persisting.

I have owned 2 Leaf backs, handled several, and love my AFi II 7. Never, ever, had to sharpen in post.

David

[geesbert]

I have owned 2 Leaf backs, handled several, and love my AFi II 7. Never, ever, had to sharpen in post.

David

if the image is back- or front- focused the best sharpening technique won't save the file.

I tried five different focus screens, with waist level finder and with prism, when focused manually with life view, the viewfinder would show it as off, when I then started AF it would focus on a totally different distance.

David: have you tried AF at f2,8 at a distance of a metre or so? I would accept 1 or maybe 2 cm focus error, but i had up to 10, sometimes more, sometimes less

[H1/A75 Guy]

David: have you tried AF at f2,8 at a distance of a metre or so? I would accept 1 or maybe 2 cm focus error, but i had up to 10, sometimes more, sometimes less

When I said said I never used sharpening in post it was  because focus is dead-nuts on. I'll try your scenario and post an un-enhanced JPEG later.

David

[tho_mas]

sad to read this story...

I tried five different focus screens, with waist level finder and with prism, when focused manually with life view, the viewfinder would show it as off, when I then started AF it would focus on a totally different distance.

As to focus plane alignement tolerances I can add that all the 4 Phase backs that were ever attatched to my 2 Contax and 1 Cambo bodies were all aligned the same way: resulting in backfocus.
Good thing is: appearently the Phase-Contax-Backs are aligned accurate within their specs.
The bad thing is: I don't belive that 2 Contax bodies and 1 Cambo body are by accident misaligned in exactly the same way.
I use splitimage screens in my Contax bodies and I have lifted the screens with shims so that the splitimage and the capture match. That works pretty accurate for me. The question is: do you have to lower (in case of frontfocus) or lift (in case of backfocus) the screen so much, that AF isn't working anymore. In my case AF is still (fairly) within the tolerances of the AF... but I don't use AF at all so I don't care.

[geesbert]

I tried shimming the screen too, but that didn't help, as AF and live view focus wouldn't match.

[EricWHiss]

Sorry to hear your story, and I think you posted part of this story earlier as I remember reading about the focus issues.   But I haven't read that many other complaints about focus on the Hy6/AFi?    Anyone else had problems with AF focus accuracy on the AFi/Hy6? When Rollei came out with the digital bundle 6008/p20 there were lots of reports that came out about focus trouble and problems calibrating - however my understanding is that these issues were related to the manufacture problems with the focusing screens themselves - many were made by a third party and were dished instead of flat. This made it impossible to calibrate accurately.  I spoke to a guy that was bidding on the contract to make all the focus screens for the AFi and he was aware of that problem with the 6008AF digital bundle and so I think that F&H/Leaf knew about this earlier problem and would not repeat it?


Also I'm sure you know that if you focus using the center points and then recompose you will have focusing errors?  I'm not suggesting this was your problem, but wanted to make sure as this is a common problem moving from DSLR to MF?       In any case this for me is one of the shortcoming of MF - its rare that I compose the picture with the primary subject dead center so until MF cameras get multipoint AF like your 1DsIII the AF is mostly worthless.   The focus/recompose problem may be more of an issue with close up work like product photography since the DOF is thin at short subject distances using MF.

Regards,
Eric

[Juanito]

All I can say is that sucks. I'd be pissed if I spent the kind of money that you did and got lousy results. There's just no excuse at that level.

The only mistake that I see you made was to not adequately test the equipment before you made the purchase. If you could have tested a setup that worked, then at least you could have had something to point to. If it didn't work during your tests, you probably wouldn't have gotten into the mess to begin with. Better luck next time!

John

[free1000]

Sorry to hear about this.  Focus problems are definitely a bugbear.

I had problems with my Aptus 75 back with back focusing and sensor uniformity. Fortunately Leaf in the form of Yair Shahar (sadly no longer with the company since Phase gobbled them up) sorted everything out for me. I am now a lucky owner of a perfect A75 with its lease paid off.

Really, should emphasise that with MF... don't pay until you have tested the product in all your desired uses. This is difficult to achieve, but make sure that when buying you get on paper what its supposed to do.

I have to say that for many purposes a 1DsIII and TS lenses are the bees knees. But just when I sometimes feel like giving up on the A75 I shoot a comparison shot with the 5DII and the file quality of the Leaf/Schneider lenses just blows the SLR files out of the water.

It can be a terrible tough journey to get MF workflow to work for you, but when it does, boy its worth it.

[geesbert]

I did test it with the rep at hand, at no pressure in my studio. everything seemed fine then. and then there wasn't a feature missing, it was a faulty camera, maybe even a faulty system, which couldn't be tested in the first place.

nowhere in the world could I have imagined having thiose kind of problems.

another reason for me to go with leaf was that I would have one manufacturer to talk to if problems occured, not at least two which would have been the case if I went with phase. when i shop for one kit, all pieces being labeled as one company, I kind of expect those pieces work together.

it was definitely not a problem of focus and recompose, rather AF, focus screen and sensor plane wasn't in sync.

[ThierryH]

... and you cannot say that I had not warned you, many times and for months, Brad!

All the best,
Thierry

Interesting story--I have some painful experiences waiting for (and buying alternatives to) a promised Phase P45+ on Hy6 for a year and a half.

Similar cash paid and lost, only to wake up and realize "it ain't comin', stupid".

[geesbert]

Don't tell me I didn't try to get informed. How would you test a camera thoroughly when it is not available for rent anywhere? I thought having a rep coming over to shoot a typical setup for a couple of hours should suffice. My MF digital on a job experience was with phase one on a Hasselblad H, which helped me to decide that I hated the H. that is the only available option for rent around here. Hasselblad would force me to use their cameras, which wasn't an option for me.

Additionally I had tested a p30+ with a mamiya afd and a RZ, loaned from the local P1 dealer at a job. main reason not to go for that was the pathetic live view. another reason was the way P1 handled the version 4 launch. for years they promised something which never came and they had left me in the cold with my Canon for too long. that felt like a company taking the piss of its customers.

then I got the sinar rep over, its terrible software would keep on crashing on the rep's computer during the demonstration to the point that nothing would work anymore, so we installed it on my computer, which still was a very wobbly experience. the screen and the live view was pathetic too and by then their hardware looked so out of date that I was shure the company would fold within half a year.

one sidenote: 18 months ago I rented a 1dsmk3 and 15minutes into the job I called my dealer and bought the camera. I must have 100000 exposures on it by now and it never gave me the slightest problems. none of my clients ever complained that the files werent good enough and I do have some really demanding clients.

 it was just my stupid Ego shouting I would need the most expensive toy on the block. the whole bullshit of how MF slows you down so you could become a better photographer.  it did slow me down, even after half a year of trying I still hadn't got a decent picture with it. and then the 3D-ishnes crap.

the idea of not being able to afford an really equivalent backup with an MF back is a frightening one. for my ds I have a 5dMK2 as a backup, but never ever needed it up to now. but I can afford it easily. it just sits in my bag, being paid for and not requiring big monthly payments.

[G_Allen]

I feel very fortunate that my H2/P30+ system is flawless.