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More fuel for the 'D800 as good as MF' fire

J

jamie123

Guest
That's the real potential impact of high-res 35mm cameras.

The MFD market is tiny. If they were animals they would be on the endangered list and close to the top.

What studio would look beyond the bottom line? which is not "is a D800 (or Canon whatever) as good as a MFD" the bottom line is "Is a D800 good enough".

Now people use analogies like high end cars or computer servers to illustrate why nothing can possibly affect the survival of the MFD survival, none of these analogies take into account how much more fragile the MFD model is and how much higher it is on the endangered list.

I dont think anyone would want the MFD to dissapear but they have to get cheaper and more realistic, they have to compete. The upward creep in prices by MFD companies is as harmful as the 35mm erosion.

An example of 'competing' would be when Phase released their new IQ backs...the price should have the same as the backs they currently offered not 10 or 15 grand more (e.g. IQ40 should have replaced P40)... Now the MFD suppliers would laugh at that idea but there you go- one step higher on the endangered list for you...
Sorry but your "if they were animals" analogy is ridiculous. Low numbers does not equal endangered. It's not like the MFD companies used to produce millions of backs a year and now they're down to a few hundred.

Should MFD backs be cheaper? Sure. Preferably free so I can afford to get one.
It's simply pointless to talk about what the price 'should' be if you don't know the numbers behind it. I'm sure they could lower the price a bit but how much? Cetainly not enough to get into mid-range Canon and Nikon territory.
And if they lowered the price of e.g. a $36k back to $30k, would that really attract 20%+ additional business? (Which actually still wouldn't make up for the loss as this doesn't factor in the additional manufactoring costs)

I'm sure all the MFD makers are constantly looking at changes in the market and trying to adapt. If they find that they can make more money by lowering their prices, I'm sure that's exactly what they'll do.
 

fotografz

Well-known member
That's the real potential impact of high-res 35mm cameras.

The MFD market is tiny. If they were animals they would be on the endangered list and close to the top.

What studio would look beyond the bottom line? which is not "is a D800 (or Canon whatever) as good as a MFD" the bottom line is "Is a D800 good enough".

Now people use analogies like high end cars or computer servers to illustrate why nothing can possibly affect the survival of the MFD survival, none of these analogies take into account how much more fragile the MFD model is and how much higher it is on the endangered list.

I dont think anyone would want the MFD to dissapear but they have to get cheaper and more realistic, they have to compete. The upward creep in prices by MFD companies is as harmful as the 35mm erosion.

An example of 'competing' would be when Phase released their new IQ backs...the price should have the same as the backs they currently offered not 10 or 15 grand more (e.g. IQ40 should have replaced P40)... Now the MFD suppliers would laugh at that idea but there you go- one step higher on the endangered list for you...
This indeed will be interesting to see how this all shakes out. I actually wouldn't argue against your theory ... yet I also wonder if this doesn't actually free the MFD makers from catering to the lower end of the high resolution market? What is not very well understood by non-MFD users is how addictive really high res capture can be. I use a 60 meg system that no 35mm DSLR can compete with, yet is versatile enough that it can also be used for more regular work ... and every lens is a Leaf Shutter for 1/800th flash sync that no 35mm DSLR has. Not important to most, but extremely important to many who make money with their gear, and thus have money to buy the best. 60 meg is great, but what I really want is the same camera with 200 meg Multi-shot capability ... and actually have applications for that.

Interesting factoid related to all this ... many of the major photo studios in my area have gone belly up in the last 5 or 6 years. Yet some are thriving ... one in particular is absolutely booming with 9 different photo stations running 12 to 15 hours a day non-stop. I had dinner with the owner and asked him what the secret was ... his simple answer was to beat all the "good enough" studios. He invested in Dedolite lighting and so much Profoto gear that he became a Profoto rental outlet, and armed all work stations with Hasselblad MFD systems or backs on T/S cameras, even though for some applications 35mm DSLRs may be "good-enough." The result of this studio's meticulous approach to unquestioned quality has been far less retouching expenses for his clients which they in-turn view as high value and worth paying him more for. It has also drawn in new international accounts and he is now expanding. Now he'll need more cameras ... and they won't be 35mm DSLRs of any flavor even if they go to 50+ meg ... he knows the difference.

-Marc
 

Bob

Administrator
Staff member
Seriously, it is all about the whole kit.
I do have both d800 and d800e on order so when I give them a spin then we will see.
what I am hoping for is that it will be a useful carry-around medium weight camera suitable for travel with a 2-3 lens kit.
What I am afraid of is that either I won't like the files or that the lenses are not up to the task.

patience patience....

BUT I will make a prediction, that despite how I feel about the D800 and its potential use in-studio or travel, I will still find the tech camera plus rode and sk lenses plus IQ180 to be a totally satisfying and preferred landscape shooting kit. Those lenses are a complete joy to work with.
-bob

I once witnessed a shooter with D3 and tripod, shooting a lighthouse in full auto machine-gun mode. I wonder what the heck he was going to do with all of those files.

A question for all of those thermodynamics nerds out there: Does a storage card full of images have more or less entropy than a blank one?
 

D&A

Well-known member
Bob Wrote--->>>"A question for all of those thermodynamics nerds out there: Does a storage card full of images have more or less entropy than a blank one?"<<<

What it does is allow them to exclaim to those tourists and other photographers passing by (and shooting with their cell phones and tech cameras) that he just obtained 2,157 images of that lighthouse and ask "What say you?" :) When people respond with "Wow, you did that"....this in turn provides the secondary incentive (energy) for him to run out quickly and purchase more and larger capacity cards in order to fill them up too...LOL!

Hey, now you see why out of all my science requirements, I did miserably in physics!

For me what is interesting in all this, is there was a recent 35mm DSLR released that surprised people with its higher than expected resolution and I too got caught up with some of the hype. I personally was severely disappointed with the look of the files, once I had a chance to intensly work with the images from that camera, utilizing the best possible optics and careful technique. Will the D800/D800e turn out the same? Impossible to say until it's in all our hands and we can thus make a reasonable and rational assessment.

Dave (D&A)
 
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MGrayson

Subscriber and Workshop Member
Entropy is related (somehow) to the number of bits needed to specify the total information. A blank card can be described with very few bits. The problem, though, is that I can never remember the sign. Let's see...if entropy is supposed to increase with disorder, then a blank card must have low entropy. Now 2000 identical pictures of a lighthouse has very little more information than one picture, so it's not a LOT higher entropy.

--Matt (Mathematician, not Physicist, so salt, grain, large )
 

Aaron

New member
Nokia just announced the N808 with a 41MP sensor...Nikon must be shi*ing itself....


I bet you that Nikon are not so arrogant that they dont watch trends, so silly as it may sound they wont want camera phones eroding any of their coolpix market , which of course digicams will just as 35mm will erode market share of MFD.

And there you have it in a nutshell. The bottom feeders keep taking bites out of those above them. Only problem is if your the top feeders as the only thing you can take a bite out of is each other.

Nice observation Yair :D
 

johnnygoesdigital

New member
Seriously, it is all about the whole kit.
I do have both d800 and d800e on order so when I give them a spin then we will see.
what I am hoping for is that it will be a useful carry-around medium weight camera suitable for travel with a 2-3 lens kit.


-bob


Exactly, a decent kit for the 80% of time when you don't need a MFD. or when shoots require a sports, fast action - type scenario. Plus, you won't cringe when you ding it, like I know I would with the S2. These new 35mm DSLR's from Nikon, Canon, etc. are perfect for overlapping formats and situations, much like a zoom lens would for focal lengths. When the new thread " Fun with D800 images" shows up on this site, then we can argue again:)
 
J

jcoffin

Guest
A question for all of those thermodynamics nerds out there: Does a storage card full of images have more or less entropy than a blank one?
In thermodynamic terms, it has slightly less entropy while you're doing the shooting, but writing uses little enough energy that the temperature will quickly fade to ambient.

I suspect in this case you're more interested in Shannon's definition of entropy than the one from thermodynamics though. By this definition, a storage card full of images would have more entropy than a blank one.
 

GrahamWelland

Subscriber & Workshop Member
Horses for courses - I'm looking forward to getting back in to 35mm DSLR territory so that I can shoot night images of star fields and trails and for general smaller travel system use. The Nikon D series cameras do a great job with these kinds of images. All of my experiments with MFDBs have sucked badly with star shooting for night shots. (I'm sure that if I had an equatorial mount and stacked images it would be fabulous but ... ).

For everything else I still like the look of medium format.
 

ptomsu

Workshop Member
Entropy is related (somehow) to the number of bits needed to specify the total information. A blank card can be described with very few bits. The problem, though, is that I can never remember the sign. Let's see...if entropy is supposed to increase with disorder, then a blank card must have low entropy. Now 2000 identical pictures of a lighthouse has very little more information than one picture, so it's not a LOT higher entropy.

--Matt (Mathematician, not Physicist, so salt, grain, large )
Maybe we should try Ontology then ..... gives a bit more freedom in interpretation .....
 

GrahamWelland

Subscriber & Workshop Member
I once witnessed a shooter with D3 and tripod, shooting a lighthouse in full auto machine-gun mode. I wonder what the heck he was going to do with all of those files.
oh, oh, oh, I know, I know (holds up hand at the back of the class) ... he was having to exposure bracket for HDR because his camera blew out the highlights or blocked out the shadows on every frame. Now the fun part is matching up those images with a moving sea (been there, done that, not going back!)

DR baby, that's where we should be spending the R&D money for what really makes a difference in real world shooting. I'd take a 16mp camera with 15 stops of DR any day over 36mp with todays 35mm DSLR DR. (and I don't care what DXO claim)
 

Bob

Administrator
Staff member
oh, oh, oh, I know, I know (holds up hand at the back of the class) ... he was having to exposure bracket for HDR because his camera blew out the highlights or blocked out the shadows on every frame. Now the fun part is matching up those images with a moving sea (been there, done that, not going back!)

DR baby, that's where we should be spending the R&D money for what really makes a difference in real world shooting. I'd take a 16mp camera with 15 stops of DR any day over 36mp with todays 35mm DSLR DR. (and I don't care what DXO claim)
LOL, and I do not believe what DxO claims.
-bob
 

tashley

Subscriber Member
LOL, and I do not believe what DxO claims.
-bob
I'm sure there are great reasons not to but, though I wasn't mad on the files from my briefly owned d7000 (mainly because most of the glass i had wasn't up to it I suspect) it was pretty hard to find a scene that gave flashing reds and blues...
 

GrahamWelland

Subscriber & Workshop Member
My challenge with the 35mm DR isn't so much that it'll totally blow out highlights/shadows so much as it'll just do it on one or other channel.
 
J

jcoffin

Guest
I believe what DxO says to the extent that I think they do their best to give an accurate report of what they've measured.

I don't, however, believe that most of what they measure has much relevance to photography. Worse, I think the little that may be relevant is measured (and/or presented) in a way that makes that relevance difficult to understand and the data difficult to use.

That means (at best) most of the data probably only means anything in a relative sense, not an absolute one. When they say camera A has 12.2 stops of dynamic range and camera B has 12.7 stops, that probably means camera B has a little more dynamic range than camera A -- but not much more than that.

Even that, however, may be somewhat suspect -- nothing I've seen about their test procedures gives a solid assurance that their controls are tight enough to make a half-stop difference statistically significant. That's not to say it's necessarily meaningless, only that we don't know enough to be sure that it means anything (and even then, the relevance problem means we probably don't know what it means in terms of real pictures).
 
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