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Cutting to the chase. 23HR/STC, or 24TS-E/HCam?

gerald.d

Well-known member
We should make this happen.

Bryan Siebel - you about?

I know Bryan has the Alpa and the 23HR and is very accomplished with it. Maybe the 32HR too, if not, I'm sure he can get hold of one. Would be interesting to see the 32HR shifted against the 23.

Let's do this in Dubai. I'll put you up in a hotel for a couple of nights if you cover the airfare Stefan :)
 

GrahamWelland

Subscriber & Workshop Member
Re STC and shift: keep in mind that the camera needs to be rotated by 90 degrees in order to shift . Not a biggie but I would have loved it to see the STC being built as a rise and fall camera rather than a shift camera .
All folks i know with an STC use it mostly for rise and fall and not left and right shift .
One more thing if you consider going the Alpa route I would wait a little while maybe until Photokina with your purchase when the updated TS mounts for wide angle lenses will be coming .
Grischa
STC with rise/fall default ... it's called the SWA and already exists. ;)
 

GrahamWelland

Subscriber & Workshop Member
Nope, SWA rise only up to 25mm. STC shift left/right 18mm either way (but ofcourse easy to turn for rise/fall).
Oops - yes you're right about rise only without flip. Well I suppose that we could get picky and introduce the SWA and de-centred lenses but I digress. :D (Also there are 4 examples of the 12 ST out there somewhere too - an intriguing study of a half max)

I have to admit that I also have plates on both axis of my STC so that I can shoot rise/fall & shift. There are times I miss my max.
 

goesbang

Member
We should make this happen.

Bryan Siebel - you about?

I know Bryan has the Alpa and the 23HR and is very accomplished with it. Maybe the 32HR too, if not, I'm sure he can get hold of one. Would be interesting to see the 32HR shifted against the 23.

Let's do this in Dubai. I'll put you up in a hotel for a couple of nights if you cover the airfare Stefan :)
I'll consider it, but I'm out of Dubai for the summer. I expect to be back before Photokina.
 

gerald.d

Well-known member
Great. I hope this can happen folks. Singapore or Dubai, doesn't really matter, as long as it gets done!

If you are able to stop off on your way though Stefan, I'd love a demo please :)

Kind regards,

Gerald.
 

H3dtogo

New member
I would definately go for the H cam. I shoot it with the Canon 17 and 24 TSE lenses aswell as with the Hartblei Zeiss SR 80 and 120mm. The camera is so easy in use, allows all settings i need, i almost never have to make a white shading and image quality is perfect. The slider also is a joy when making double exposures as you do not need to use force to slide ( motor used) and i always goes to the exact same position.
 

gerald.d

Well-known member
I would definately go for the H cam. I shoot it with the Canon 17 and 24 TSE lenses aswell as with the Hartblei Zeiss SR 80 and 120mm. The camera is so easy in use, allows all settings i need, i almost never have to make a white shading and image quality is perfect. The slider also is a joy when making double exposures as you do not need to use force to slide ( motor used) and i always goes to the exact same position.
Hi - which back do you use?

Kind regards,

Gerald.
 

Jack

Sr. Administrator
Staff member
One other comment on stitching the 32HR or any other lens on the IQ180 -- LCC color shifts do exist, and in most cases you will have some color tuning to do if you want accurate color and perfect matches. This sounds easier than it is: my typical procedure is to apply LCCs appropriately to each frame, then open all three (Center, Left and Right) frames in C1, pin RGB call-out flags in 3 of the same spots along the stitch lines for center to left and center to right, then go to work matching the edge frame colors to the center frame. This usually requires careful and subtle tweaks to color temp and tint, then very fine tuning using the advanced color editor -- I can tell you from experience, as can anybody else who's done it, it is not a quick or trivial procedure. It usually takes me about an hour to get an acceptable match. Note I usually never bother with this step for a landscape stitch -- or just do it quick and dirty -- and rather let the pano assembly program do the color blend, here CS's color blending is actually quite excellent. But with a client shot, like an architectural pano, I've literally spent hours getting the frames to match, and its surprising just how visible a few points of color difference can show along a stitch-line.
 

gerald.d

Well-known member
So I finally got to do this test myself (actually with a 24 TS-E on the FPS, and a 23HR on the Max).

The 23HR absolutely blows the 24 TS-E out of the water. Hopefully I'll get some time tomorrow to load up a couple of samples.
 

torger

Active member
I'm super-interested in seeing some real-life A/B comparison. I use the TS-E 24 myself on a Canon camera, and the lens is sure good, so good I can use it with 1.4x extender and get good results (gives me my favourite fov of 35mm 135 equivalent).

However, as soon as I switch to my medium format system the quality expectations rise. One aspect I think is that the lack of AA-filter lets you "see" more of the lens performance, but also because one big reason for using medium format is for me the high resolution, so what I consider perfectly okay lens performance for my Canon can be unacceptably poor if same output would come from my Linhof Techno. Yes, it's double standards :)

The Rodenstock should on paper be better, shorter flange distance and smaller aperture allows for less crazy-corrective designs, but on the other hand Canon has produced several impressive new lens designs lately and has some very advanced optical technology that I'm not sure even Rodenstock has the equivalence of, so I don't think it was a clear-cut case.
 
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jagsiva

Active member
So I finally got to do this test myself (actually with a 24 TS-E on the FPS, and a 23HR on the Max).

The 23HR absolutely blows the 24 TS-E out of the water. Hopefully I'll get some time tomorrow to load up a couple of samples.
I went through a very similar process, especially since I already have a boatload of Canon glass.

I played with the HCAM, and while built well and meets all its claims, I decided it was not for me.

I went with the 32HR, and may add the 23HR at some point. The thread below has stitched images with 32HR on IQ180 on Arca (horizontal with +/- 15mm). With C1 7, I think think the corners, even at this shift level are very usable. A slight tilt would have saved more of the foreground on the left side as I think it is more DoF than lens issues. I also do not use the CF on this lens. This post also has links to the raw files.

http://www.getdpi.com/forum/medium-format-systems-digital-backs/43117-schneider-35mm-iq180.html

Also, don't forget that you still have the option of pano stitching any of these lenses if you don't have anything in the foreground.

There are lot of opinions out there, but best to try for your self. For me, and taking page from Mr. Mancuso, I feel I need to get gear out of the way, and the best way to do that is not make compromises if possible. Again, physics and finances don't always allow this.

Having used the best wide glass on Nikon/Canon/Leica, I can safely say that the Rodie 32HR is magical.
 

gerald.d

Well-known member
OK, a few caveats up front.

This is not meant as a scientific test - I only really did it for my own interest sake and wasn't originally intending to share these, but since you asked... :)

23HR on the Max, 24TSE on the FPS. Same IQ180 back used for both.

The shots are a few minutes apart, and I didn't get exactly the same framing - like I said, this isn't intended to be scientific.

ISO 35, I thought I'd used f/8 used on both lenses, but looking back on it, I think the 23HR might have been f/8 and a third. Unfortunately I left WB on auto. I've changed the WB on the 24TSE shot to match that on the 23HR. Not sure if this was the right thing to do, but there's a huge difference in the colours.

3mm rise on both. Clearly the horizons are not aligned - I think that the 24TSE does not mount dead central on the FPS, but am not sure. Something I'll try to look at in more detail when I get some more time.

LCC's applied to both files, but apart from that, they're basically untouched through C1 (so whatever default processing is in there would have been used).

23HR, then 24TSE (as if you needed telling)

Full frame:





Bottom left:





Edge of the building in bottom left





Mid-height Burj Khalifa





Top of The Address



 

torger

Active member
I can say from my Canon experience that the TS-E 24mm is not an f/8 lens, it's more of an f/10-f/11. So if you are using the TS-E 24 with an IQ180 that uses most of the image circle and look into the corners, f/10-f/11 and some deconvolution sharpening on that is probably a better image quality tradeoff.

If you need f/8, this test clearly shows that the Rodenstock is significantly superior - no need to be more scientific than this, thank you for sharing. With my quality standards on MF I would not think the TS-E result is acceptable.

I think it is still unanswered if say f/11 would yield a "good enough" result though, the corners do get significantly better at that aperture. You would suffer some diffraction of course though, but I don't think it would be too bad in a sharpened print.
 

gerald.d

Well-known member
I can say from my Canon experience that the TS-E 24mm is not an f/8 lens, it's more of an f/10-f/11. So if you are using the TS-E 24 with an IQ180 that uses most of the image circle and look into the corners, f/10-f/11 and some deconvolution sharpening on that is probably a better image quality tradeoff.

If you need f/8, this test clearly shows that the Rodenstock is significantly superior - no need to be more scientific than this, thank you for sharing. With my quality standards on MF I would not think the TS-E result is acceptable.

I think it is still unanswered if say f/11 would yield a "good enough" result though, the corners do get significantly better at that aperture. You would suffer some diffraction of course though, but I don't think it would be too bad in a sharpened print.
I'll try to find the time to do another test later in the week at f/11 :)
 

gazwas

Active member
Great test Gerald and thanks for taking the time to share your results, however I have to agree with Torger. The Canon is pretty well know to have bad corners at f8 while the Rodenstock lenses are designed to perform at their best at f8.

Disregarding the edge performance, I' quite shocked at how good the Canon is in the centre compared to the Rodie. I think the slightly darker exposure on the Rodie helps pull in more detail. With a 1/3 or 1/2 less on the Canon, things would look even better.
 

GrahamWelland

Subscriber & Workshop Member
I can't attest to the Canon 24 but I got my 23 HR on Thursday and after only a couple of days of shooting in Yosemite this weekend I'm in danger of sounding like a teenage valley girl with my enthusiasm - OMG!!! This is one SHARP lens!

I was concerned initially that it was going to be as large as the other new Rodie's but actually even in Alpa mount it's really not a monster. I don't have the center filter yet but C1 7 seems to do a pretty decent job with the LCCs. My first impressions of the corner sharpness match Gerald's samples here - i.e. really sharp.
 
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