While I know everyone urged me not to rush into it, I went ahead and bought a medium format kit for an important shoot I had. And I have to say I'm VERY glad I did. I'm in love with the quality of this thing and its an older back. I can't wait to upgrade to a newer P30+ or possibly a better leaf back than the one I currently have. Below is a picture from my second shoot that I edited tonight. I wish I could attach pics of the first shoot as they came out great! But I can't do to the fact I need to wait until they are available to the public first.
Glad to see you got it working. And are you shooting into Capture One? I think you will find that this is the resolution and tonal range that all these people lurking around on this forum expect from their MF system. I also think as you consider the upgrades down the road, look at what you shoot. I looked at your work the first day we discussed MF options for you. I felt like P30/P30+ or even better P40/P40+ was the perfect camera for you because of two very important considerations. Speed and smaller pixel size which will help reduce morie patters like on the models left knee. That type of morie may have had some color aliasing associated with it that Capture One should take out. It is very difficult to do anything except retouch that type of texture pattern morie. If you shot rings or medical products that are hard line items, you do not see these artifacts. When you shoot people, they are usually wearing clothes, may not always, that can show textures so strong that they create a morie pattern. So to reduce the amount of this occurring, using a smaller pixel size camera will help tremendously.
I have seen these MF camera evolve over the last 19 years since I purchased my first Leaf DCB camera as a dealer. Every time we had a major upgrade in hardware and the pixel size changed, upgrading not only meant you could shoot faster and with more detail, but there was less retouching and dealing with the artifacts produced by some of the large pixel size cameras. Many times we ran into issues with catalog photography, silk ties to be exact where the P25 with 9 microns pixels created a huge morie issue that in the end would require more time in retouch department that got billed to client. Put a P45/P45+ in place, and 99% of it got eliminated through the hardware change. We saw the same thing take place with the P40/P65+ as they were introduced with even smaller pixels.
Your Aptus 17 has I think a 7.2 micron size.
The new backs like P30/P30+ have 6.7 micron size.
And P65+ offers 6 microns.
The smaller you go, the more you will see morie reduced or eliminated.
And we are seeing great results from the Leaf Aptus II 8 which is a 40 MP back with 6 micron size pixels. So that may be a great way to upgrade to. Both brands currently are offering very attractive upgrade paths. And very fast shooting.
So good luck and keep us informed of your progress.
Sincerely,
Chris Snipes
Sales Manager, Florida
Capture Integration
http://www.captureintegration.com
Phase One, Leaf, Lecia, Cambo, Canon, Apple, Profoto, Eizo & More
404.522.7662 Atlanta
305.350.9900 Miami
877.217.9870 National
813.335.2473 Cell
Sign up for our Email Newsletter
Subscribe to our RSS Feed