New to site and DMF... Just in time with H5D ! Help Please.

[EricWHiss]

It is so great to see DHW has a website up!  For so long they had only a place holder.  I'm a total fan boy, but their cameras are fantastic!  Their marketing... not so great. 

[BernardLanguillier]

It would be nice, if we all could maintain respect, and base on facts of actual insights and knowledge collected by actual use of gear discussed, such as we have actually made quality images with.

Frankly, this is hilarious. 

You have been doing exactly the opposite in this whole thread by:
- Recommending MF equipment you have never used (Cambo, Aptus 22,...) for applications you don't seem to be that experienced with (grand landscape),
- Commenting negatively about DSLRs cameras you have never used (D800,...),
- Commenting negatively about shooting techniques you have little experience with (stitching).

Note that I am not commenting about equipment at all here, I am only commenting about your behavior Anders.

As a final request to you, could you please let us know what pseudo you are using when posting on DPreview? We could perhaps have more fun by reading that as well?

Cheers,
Bernard

[Anders_HK]

Frankly, this is hilarious. 

You have been doing exactly the opposite in this whole thread by:
- Recommending MF equipment you have never used (Cambo, Aptus 22,...) for applications you don't seem to be that experienced with (grand landscape),
- Commenting negatively about DSLRs cameras you have never used (D800,...),
- Commenting negatively about shooting techniques you have little experience with (stitching).

Note that I am not commenting about equipment at all here, I am only commenting about your behavior Anders.

As a final request to you, could you please let us know what pseudo you are using when posting on DPreview? We could perhaps have more fun by reading that as well?

Cheers,
Bernard

Suggest you slow your horses...

- I looked really careful at Aptus 22 along with Aptus 65 when I went with Aptus 65.
- I near went with tech cam and will still head that route, have looked in detail at the systems for long time.
- Nope, I do not look negative on D800. Sounds like a great DSLR and for DLSR very high image quality.
- Nope, I do not look down on your stitching, but am of view that tech cam is higher image quality route. We may disagree, is ok

My Anders_HK is since number of year not valid on dpreview...

Above valuable to this thread

[FredBGG]

It is so great to see DHW has a website up!  For so long they had only a place holder.  I'm a total fan boy, but their cameras are fantastic!  Their marketing... not so great. 

Give that gem of a camera a sensor with cmos style live view and focusing off the sensor and I would be standing right beside you drooling Many nice things about that camera.

[BernardLanguillier]

- Nope, I do not look negative on D800. Sounds like a great DSLR and for DLSR very high image quality.
- Nope, I do not look down on your stitching, but am of view that tech cam is higher image quality route. We may disagree, is ok

Just taking one more of those many examples you are offering us to read in every single of your posts...

According to your own recommendation of speaking from experience... how can you comment that the D800 is great "for a DSLR", implying that it is not as great as other types of cameras, when you have not used one yourself?

You may want to try to answer these 2 simple questions
- "How do you know that?"
- "Why need to spend all that time convincing the world of something you cannot reasonably know about since you have never used the damn camera?"

Don't do it for me, just do it for yourself.

Cheers,
Bernard

[Anders_HK]

Just taking one more of those many examples you are offering us to read in every single of your posts...

According to your own recommendation of speaking from experience... how can you comment that the D800 is great "for a DSLR", implying that it is not as great as other types of cameras, when you have not used one yourself?

You may want to try to answer these 2 simple questions
- "How do you know that?"
- "Why need to spend all that time convincing the world of something you cannot reasonably know about since you have never used the damn camera?"

Don't do it for me, just do it for yourself.

Cheers,
Bernard

I could ask you exact same of what you post.

Suggest we both give each other some slack.  

Likewise appreciate if you not ask more and more to pull deeper... simply good if we can leave at respect.

[ErikKaffehr]

Hi,

It's OK to be a fan boy, sometimes ;-)

My understanding is that there is a long story about the survival of DHW, the folks working there have taken great risks and given up much.

Best regards
Erik

It is so great to see DHW has a website up!  For so long they had only a place holder.  I'm a total fan boy, but their cameras are fantastic!  Their marketing... not so great. 

[ErikKaffehr]

Hi,

I guess that this is good advice to a few of us posting on this thread.

I would add that Anders recommendation of the Cambo + Aptus combination seems to be a reasonable one, weather he actually did use it or not.

I'm not a Nikon fanboy. But I can read, I can see pixels, now how to print, do some testing myself. From my horizon the Nikon D800/D800E makes a lot of sense. The performance of the Nikon can be estimated using published tests and other data. The Nikon and a truly excellent lens is yours for 5000$US, it is a bit hard to ignore the option, if making good images is all you want. There may be other factors like enjoyment of using a well built tool.

Very clearly, MF has some advantages, but those advantages can only be judged from real pictures. Some argue that you must judge a system based on own usage. In my view you can accurately judge some aspects by well executed test images. You can never judge anything from a web sized image, unless it shows a specific aspect of an image. So comparing actual pixels may be OK if the comparison is correctly done. Using available information makes a lot of sense in my humble opinion.

Best regards
Erik

I could ask you exact same of what you post.

Suggest we both give each other some slack.  

Likewise appreciate if you not ask more and more to pull deeper... simply good if we can leave at respect.

[EricWHiss]

Give that gem of a camera a sensor with cmos style live view and focusing off the sensor and I would be standing right beside you drooling Many nice things about that camera.

Why wait for a CMOS sensor?   It's a fantastic film camera (perhaps the best?) and works quite nicely with the AFi-12 back. Revolving sensor really makes the ergonomics complete.   The viewfinder is excellent and I mostly manual focus with the screen. The 45 degree prism has 2.5x magnification.  I shoot hand held at 1/2 the focal length all the time.    That said we are lucky to have so many great cameras to choose from, new and old. 

[BernardLanguillier]

I could ask you exact same of what you post.

Yes, you can.

And you will see that I only recommend what I know and have used myself extensively.

Cheers,
Bernard

[FredBGG]

Why wait for a CMOS sensor?   It's a fantastic film camera (perhaps the best?) and works quite nicely with the AFi-12 back. Revolving sensor really makes the ergonomics complete.   The viewfinder is excellent and I mostly manual focus with the screen. The 45 degree prism has 2.5x magnification.  I shoot hand held at 1/2 the focal length all the time.    That said we are lucky to have so many great cameras to choose from, new and old. 

It's a fine camera, but with film the larger GX680 6x8 negative makes me much happier... though my back sometimes will not agree.
Keep in mind though that I don't use the square format so I am comparing 6x8 with 4.5 x 6.

[yaya]

How about we all throw some money in a hat and get them a room?

You've got my 20p 

[bcooter]

I'm not trying to escalate this silly conversation but just going to clarify a few things and be done.

1.  We tape the name on all of our cameras, except the REDs.  Nearly every project some client or agencies video guys are shooting behind-the-scenes and most of our client's brands have issues showing big white logos.

If there is no tape on our camera's logos then it got pulled off by accident.  When we shot that Phase gig, we just came off a project that had an agency still photographer and videographer documenting the Barcelona shoot so that's why the contax name was blanked out.
We weren't trying to trick anyone.

2.  The Phase video screen grab someone pulled up should have been retouched to to say p30+.  I've never looked at the complete video, (probably won't), but to change the p45 to p30 would have taken 10 minutes in post  and makes sense, but hey . . . Phase has a small marketing budget and the editor probably had limited resource.

Having worked in partnership with large corporations and agencies with 1000 times the marketing budget of Phase I've seen bigger mistakes than a logo or slight misinfomration about a product  (especially one that didn't exist at the time).

Cut em' some slack, because unless your privledged to some e-mail that said "do this or else", it probably was just simple oversight, compounded by time and resources.  These medium format companies are tiny in the world of electronic camera companies. 

3.  I don't believe you can judge any camera system unless you shoot in your own exact style, go through rounds of post production and deliver.  I'm not going to comment on the D800 cause I haven't tried one, but since I shoot 99.9999999% people skin tones are important to me and I don't like the  skintones with my Nikons.

4.  Most of this is Apples to Oranges.  Everyone shoots in a different style and subject,  so IMO  test in your own style and don't waste your time looking on the web to compare images of any size, because you didn't shoot them and don't know the intent of the photographer and/or client.  With medium format it is very, very easy to arrange a proper test, if your serious.

5.  I would have said a year ago (actually I did) that all medium format should go to cmos.  Today I feel the opposite.  Compared to the 35mm cameras my Phase have slow iso, but we light, know how to work around it and in my work (let me repeat that) in my work, I have found the ccd based cameras I've used from the dcs 760, to the Leica M8 to the Aptus 22 to my Phase P21+ and P30+ all have much more robust files to work in post than any cmos camera I own.


IMO

BC

[FredBGG]

You've got my 20p 

Impressive... deep pockets 

[FredBGG]

I'm not trying to escalate this silly conversation but just going to clarify a few things and be done.

1.  We tape the name on all of our cameras, except the REDs.  Nearly every project some client or agencies video guys are shooting behind-the-scenes and most of our client's brands have issues showing big white logos.

If there is no tape on our camera's logos then it got pulled off by accident.  When we shot that Phase gig, we just came off a project that had an agency still photographer and videographer documenting the Barcelona shoot so that's why the contax name was blanked out.
We weren't trying to trick anyone.

....

I don't doubt you at all. Often logos have to be hidden on props in films or ads. Some photographers also just don't like flashy white text waving in the models face.

However out of curiosity what do you think about the description PhaseOneDK used on the youtube posting of the video.



It's pretty clear:
"Phase One camera system: http://www.phaseone.com
Watch professional photographer James Russell working with the Phase One camera system on a photo shooting for Phase One."

Click on the hyperlink, takes you to the phase one web site and this is the camera system there is the DF. phase One Camera System

This clearly would lead people to believe that what you say about being unbreakable even after your roughing the camera up etc is refereed to the DF.

I agree with you about the robustness of the P series backs.... built like little tanks, but the DF is far from robust or rock solid.
Mine would work for days on end and then out of the blue the wheel on the body or grip would no longer work.... remove lens... remove batteries... put it together again...
make up some excuse to tell the client.... put it back together again.. say a little prayer and it may come back to life.

The p25+ back on my Fuji gx680 worked all the time.

Yea as you say I could have tested one before, but that would have made little difference because the freeze attacks might not happen for days.

Anyway I just want to repeat that I'm not saying you did anything fishy. I probably should have made that more clear from the get go.

[FredBGG]

.....

Cut em' some slack, because unless your privledged to some e-mail that said "do this or else", it probably was just simple oversight, compounded by time and resources.  These medium format companies are tiny in the world of electronic camera companies. 

.....

IMO

BC

I would BC if it were not for this sort of thing:

Like this one:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91KqEfi23FU&feature=youtu.be

The video shows a Phase One guy shooting moving action with strobe and WIDE OPEN
with fast focus. Yet the very manual of that cameras states that you need to shoot at f8 in order to achieve focus
with fast focus.

From page 99 of the pdf manual.

C-19 AF Priority [AF_2]
Accuracy of auto-focusing priority (default setting) or speed priority can be
decided.
0: Speed
(Aperture to f/ 8 is recommended when using this function.)[/quore]



The claims of faster focusing are somewhat over rated.
buried deep in the manual it states that the faster focusing setting is only accurate enough at f8 or more.
No mention of that in there video plugging their new focusing.

[Anders_HK]

I'm not trying to escalate this silly conversation but just going to clarify a few things and be done.

Likewise.

4.  Most of this is Apples to Oranges.  Everyone shoots in a different style and subject,  so IMO  test in your own style and don't waste your time looking on the web to compare images of any size, because you didn't shoot them and don't know the intent of the photographer and/or client.  With medium format it is very, very easy to arrange a proper test, if your serious.

Sample RAW files of similar subjects to ones own are very valuable, since shot by folks already familiar with the system/back/camera. Likewise is hearing from other shooters / dealer/agent of differences to what one normally shoot, since that can help to pinpoint the differences towards making an individual choice. Review of many processed images display what others achieve after post.