Howdy,
I shoot primarily "semi-planar abstracts", a.k.a. brick walls. I tend to hunt for hours on foot until I find the one or two subjects that work for me. I use exclusively natural light, but it is not always in abundant supply. Today I primarily shoot D800e on a big tripod with Zeiss glass, mostly at 100mm or 135mm. I occasionally stitch several images to give me a bigger working area.
My goal is always large physical prints. I generally print at 30 or 40" in the small dimension, and as a consequence my (not big) house's walls are always at capacity with artwork. (Fortunately, I think within a few years 4K and 8K displays will largely solve this wall space problem. But let's leave that for another thread!)
I am curious what you all think would be the very best system for maximizing IQ in my scenario. (I suppose I should add the caveat that I am not interested in waiting ten minutes on a line-scanning back. The two things that seem like they should be of considerable interest to me are (a) movements and (b) multishot.
The movements I have very little experience with. One time I had a Canon TS-E and figured out enough to use it to get a receding plane (the ground) in focus from near to far. I am guessing I could also use movements, though, to help me get my brick walls in focus. I often struggle with this, getting squared up against the target, either because it is way too big, or because it is horizontal and I don't have a way to hang my camera in the air five feet above the surface (one tripod leg or another is always in the way). Today I either sacrifice getting the whole thing in focus, or I shoot multiples and focus stack later, or I just give up and move on to find something that works.
As for multishot, I have seen the Foveon and MS samples, and they just seem to have so much more information by oversampling the image circle. I love to shoot stuff that's oxidizing or that has other interesting color "issues" (e.g., metameterism), and I have a feeling the extra color data, to say nothing of the increased resolving power, would be valuable. However, I really do not want to tether a laptop or really even a surface tablet in the field. I already feel like what I have is too much gear a lot of the time?!
I should note that I really need a way to verify focus across the image field. My ideal camera would have a liveview mode where a small chunk of all four corners, plus the center, are shown in real time at the same time. No zooming out and back in or arduous scrolling back and forth across the image! But, since I'm interested in reality, I guess I just want to stipulate that if I go to MF I need a back that can deliver reasonable focus verification capability in some form. The faster, the better.
Okay, so, if cost is no object, what tools would you use to get the very best result in this scenario? Would you even bother with MF, or should I just press on with my Zeiss + Sony/Nikon kit? What else should I be thinking about?
Your comments are appreciated very much. Thank you!
I shoot primarily "semi-planar abstracts", a.k.a. brick walls. I tend to hunt for hours on foot until I find the one or two subjects that work for me. I use exclusively natural light, but it is not always in abundant supply. Today I primarily shoot D800e on a big tripod with Zeiss glass, mostly at 100mm or 135mm. I occasionally stitch several images to give me a bigger working area.
My goal is always large physical prints. I generally print at 30 or 40" in the small dimension, and as a consequence my (not big) house's walls are always at capacity with artwork. (Fortunately, I think within a few years 4K and 8K displays will largely solve this wall space problem. But let's leave that for another thread!)
I am curious what you all think would be the very best system for maximizing IQ in my scenario. (I suppose I should add the caveat that I am not interested in waiting ten minutes on a line-scanning back. The two things that seem like they should be of considerable interest to me are (a) movements and (b) multishot.
The movements I have very little experience with. One time I had a Canon TS-E and figured out enough to use it to get a receding plane (the ground) in focus from near to far. I am guessing I could also use movements, though, to help me get my brick walls in focus. I often struggle with this, getting squared up against the target, either because it is way too big, or because it is horizontal and I don't have a way to hang my camera in the air five feet above the surface (one tripod leg or another is always in the way). Today I either sacrifice getting the whole thing in focus, or I shoot multiples and focus stack later, or I just give up and move on to find something that works.
As for multishot, I have seen the Foveon and MS samples, and they just seem to have so much more information by oversampling the image circle. I love to shoot stuff that's oxidizing or that has other interesting color "issues" (e.g., metameterism), and I have a feeling the extra color data, to say nothing of the increased resolving power, would be valuable. However, I really do not want to tether a laptop or really even a surface tablet in the field. I already feel like what I have is too much gear a lot of the time?!
I should note that I really need a way to verify focus across the image field. My ideal camera would have a liveview mode where a small chunk of all four corners, plus the center, are shown in real time at the same time. No zooming out and back in or arduous scrolling back and forth across the image! But, since I'm interested in reality, I guess I just want to stipulate that if I go to MF I need a back that can deliver reasonable focus verification capability in some form. The faster, the better.
Okay, so, if cost is no object, what tools would you use to get the very best result in this scenario? Would you even bother with MF, or should I just press on with my Zeiss + Sony/Nikon kit? What else should I be thinking about?
Your comments are appreciated very much. Thank you!