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Multishot - I wish .......

cunim

Well-known member
Having looked briefly at the "MF is dead" threads and the IQ2 series, I see no discussion of the thing that - to my eyes - makes the greatest contribution to image quality. That is multishot. For studio and other static work, I just love those images - like an achromatic but with color.

I used the H4D50MS briefly. What gorgeous pixels! It is a constant temptation to dump my IQ gear and settle in with the Hassy 200MS camera. Various reasons I do not do that - primarily a hatred of Phocus and an appreciation for the excellent user interface of the IQ. However, if image quality were the sole deciding factor I would be there in a shot.

Phase, I will skip the IQ2 series though I am attracted by the achromatic. You can have my money and my thanks the instant you announce an MS-capable back. To my mind, there is no better way to keep medium format healthy, both as the premier imaging tool and as a marketable technology.

Am I alone in this, or do others wish to encourage a multishot option for the IQ line?
 

BANKER1

Member
Your hatred of Phocus is a mystery to me, but you could always use Lightroom. Personally, I don't understand how Hasselblad can offer such a piece of software free. I can only surmise they do it because the color Phocus offers is so much better than can be obtained by other software providers. My guess is that Hasselblad will shift their customers over to Lightroom sometime in the future.

Greg
 

dougpeterson

Workshop Member
Am I alone in this, or do others wish to encourage a multishot option for the IQ line?
For your own planning I can tell you that I'm quite sure this will never happen.

I'm not making any judgements either way in saying this. Just providing you information.
 

fotografz

Well-known member
I'm a huge fan of MS ever since I had one for a while.

Interface is less important with MS since everything is controlled by computer software and previews are on big screens. Just use the tethered single shot until everything is perfect, then let MS do its thing.

I love Phocus, because it is similar to LR, and the color control wheel is one of the best selected color modifiers I've ever used. Wish it was included in LR.

-Marc
 

Shashin

Well-known member
Phase, I will skip the IQ2 series though I am attracted by the achromatic. You can have my money and my thanks the instant you announce an MS-capable back. To my mind, there is no better way to keep medium format healthy, both as the premier imaging tool and as a marketable technology.
Phase probably has not gone to multi-shot because the market demand is weak. And obviously from your post, MS is not enough for you to jump ship to Hasselblad. Another reason it is not that important.
 

cunim

Well-known member
Sigh. Too bad Doug. Those images are just so special. Between the 39MS and the IQ180 I am perfectly happy with the IQ. Between the 50MS and the 180 it's a wash pretty much. I have never tried the 200MS and I would love the opportunity to do so. That might be expensive.

I stick with Phase because they have done such a good job in making the camera work well for single shot, which is most of what I do even with a MS camera. However, for those times when MS is applicable, boy do I miss it.

Begin rant. At some point, DSLRs are going to bite Phase hard unless P1 products have an obvious technical advantage. Sure P1 have debayering IP and so forth, and those things drive product development to an extent. However, my impression is that people buy what they see. Much easier to sell a visbily superior MS image (superior to a 50MP dslr with evolved lenses) than a subtly superior debayering algorithm. End rant.

I did not mean to bad mouth Phocus. I used it for years and it has excellent features. My problem was stability. With my technologies (ragged edge PCs and tech cameras), I found that it almost always took a long time before a shoot to get the program running stably enough to shoot with. Shooting MS just made the stability issues worse. Hassy told me they wished I could just move to Mac. Them's fighting words.
 

mbn

New member
At some point, DSLRs are going to bite Phase hard unless P1 products have an obvious technical advantage.
For me, MFD means technical cameras and freedom of movements that can't be done with DSLR/35mm systems, yet.

And as we already learned since the release of the D800...
MFD is dead!

:deadhorse:
 
Just throwing this out there, but you can do MS with any camera using PhotoAcute Studio, assuming you have a fairly beefy computer to run it. I use it with my 5D2 to turn out 84.5mp files that I can scale back down and have a razor-sharp image with no noise even in the extreme shadows.
You can of course use the images as-is, but it doesn't add that much resolution, probably equivalent to a 3-4 shot stitch...

It comes with two catches though: Best results are gotten if the program has both the sensor and lens profile combo that you're using. You can actually make them yourself, and possibly get a free licence for PAS for doing so, but I wonder what the devs will think when they get a request to add a profile for a digital back :ROTFL: Well, probably not that bad since they already have seven D800 and four D800E profiles :thumbup:
The other catch is that you have to manually displace the camera by a tiny fraction between shots, which I think wouldn't be too hard with a geared head.

Anyways, I use it mainly for reproduction work, where it probably sees the most gains. It lets me comfortably print a meter wide without any digital edge to the image. YMMV. I work by outputting tiffs of an image sequence from C17 and processing them in PAS. If you output Adobe or ProPhoto RGB, don't worry about the images looking bland when you load them up, you can open them in Photoshop after processing and assign the correct profile again.

Here's a link for the curious: PhotoAcute Studio
 

yaya

Active member
If you say it's a wash between the 50MS and the IQ180 then what's the problem?
Sales of 80MP backs since the Aptus-II 12 came out, in the high-end repro market, which used to be the main target for MS backs, show that these very demanding customers prefer the simplicity, speed, efficiency and reliability of single shot and treat MS as a thing of the past, regardless of what the spec sheets suggest...

Yair
 

Shashin

Well-known member
Begin rant. At some point, DSLRs are going to bite Phase hard unless P1 products have an obvious technical advantage. Sure P1 have debayering IP and so forth, and those things drive product development to an extent. However, my impression is that people buy what they see. Much easier to sell a visbily superior MS image (superior to a 50MP dslr with evolved lenses) than a subtly superior debayering algorithm. End rant.
LOL. Yes, we keep having this conversation each time a 35mm DSLR is released and it spells the end of MFD. And each time, MFD does not die and its market grows. Perhaps the spec sheet is not why people shoot MFD? Maybe there is more to an image than how many pixels it is divided into?

Still, I am waiting for Canon to release their super-duper 35mm DSLR soon as I am tired of talking about the D800.
 

fotografz

Well-known member
If you say it's a wash between the 50MS and the IQ180 then what's the problem?
Sales of 80MP backs since the Aptus-II 12 came out, in the high-end repro market, which used to be the main target for MS backs, show that these very demanding customers prefer the simplicity, speed, efficiency and reliability of single shot and treat MS as a thing of the past, regardless of what the spec sheets suggest...

Yair
Biased vendor remark with no third party industry-wide data to back it up.

I doubt Hasselblad would make the H4D/50MS-200MS/H5D/50MS-200MS if no one was buying them.

My pal just added another 50MS to his very successful studio after Phase One gave a demo, and the 50MS clearly outperformed the IQ180 for their commercial studio still life applications ... even the Phase One rep was surprised according to my friend who owns the studio ... who is a working photographer, selling images, not gear.

Have a nice day :)

-Marc
 

cunim

Well-known member
If you say it's a wash between the 50MS and the IQ180 then what's the problem?
Sales of 80MP backs since the Aptus-II 12 came out, in the high-end repro market, which used to be the main target for MS backs, show that these very demanding customers prefer the simplicity, speed, efficiency and reliability of single shot and treat MS as a thing of the past, regardless of what the spec sheets suggest...

Yair
Yair, when I say a wash, I mean in terms of user interface (a biggie) + relative corporate stability (the other biggie) + C1 vs Phocus etc. In other words, the wonderful image quality of the MS camera is insufficient to move me away from the almost as wonderful quality of the IQ180. Reality on the ground, as they say.

Not sure what would happen if I tried the 200 MS. Never mind. I'm just one guy who really likes MS. From your market research, doesn't appear that there are a whole lot more of us out there. If there are, you are missing an opportunity. Just saying...
 

Shashin

Well-known member
I doubt Hasselblad would make the H4D/50MS-200MS/H5D/50MS-200MS if no one was buying them.
And what percentage of Hasselblad sales are MS? Having a product does not mean it is a big revenue generator. Hasselblad may take slow sales for the residual benefit to the product line. It does not mean it would be profitable for Phase.

Naturally, if Phase have more than enough production and sales with single-shot backs, the risk and cost to add more product may simply not be profitable enough.
 

EH21

Member
I'm a big fan of these too and kept my cf 528. I'm getting friendlier with Phocus, but for me its just not as fast to use as c1. I actually sometimes go back to flexcolor actually.

I think Sinar has a new MS back out that still does the full micro step.

I guess you could use a set of filters with the new phase achromatic backs to get color?
 

torger

Active member
Brand loyalty is strong, you learn to like a user interface and don't want to change if you don't have to, trade-in programmes make it cheap to choose products like the manufacturer decides. I takes a lot of disappointment for a customer to change direction. Phase One's been the strongest and most stable brand for a while and I think many choose to buy into them just because it's the strongest brand. It's more than feature set that decides.
 

yaya

Active member
Biased vendor remark with no third party industry-wide data to back it up.

I doubt Hasselblad would make the H4D/50MS-200MS/H5D/50MS-200MS if no one was buying them.

My pal just added another 50MS to his very successful studio after Phase One gave a demo, and the 50MS clearly outperformed the IQ180 for their commercial studio still life applications ... even the Phase One rep was surprised according to my friend who owns the studio ... who is a working photographer, selling images, not gear.

Have a nice day :)

-Marc
Hey Marc I'm not here to pick a fight ya know....(there are other forums for that...), I'm just sharing my experience and (definitely biased) opinion as someone directly in charge of the cultural heritage business of the company from London to Auckland...

I'm talking about big projects with massive municipal/ governmental/ continental (but also private) funding that always look at the bigger picture: Image quality is always a top priority but other factors like capture time, processing time, file management, required operating skills, operational costs, support etc. are just as important.

Of course (as Torger suggests) if one is already locked into a certain product's workflow, interface etc. it can be harder to change or let's say easier to stay...however the number of MS backs we trade in on a weekly/ monthly base, to me alt least, shows that there's a definite trend of moving to simpler, faster and more efficient single shot solutions...

Just sayin'

Yair
 
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fotografz

Well-known member
Hey Marc I'm not here to pick a fight ya know....just sharing my experience and opinion as someone directly in charge of the cultural heritage business of the company from London to Auckland...

I'm talking about big projects with massive municipal/ governmental/ continental (but also private) funding that always look at the bigger picture: Image quality is always a top priority but other factors like capture time, processing time, file management, required operating skills, operational costs, support etc. are just as important.

Of course (as Torger suggests) if one is already locked into a certain product's workflow, interface etc. it can be harder to change or let's say easier to stay...however the number of MS backs we trade in on a weekly/ monthly base, to me alt least, shows that there's a definite trend of moving to simpler, faster and more efficient single shot solutions...

Just sayin'

Yair
No quarrel, just facts please ... as they say ... just give me the Car Fax :) Hard sales numbers from a third party industry source. Hell, I don't even blindly buy "sell info" from a Hasselblad rep. I prefer info from working users, and not just cherry picked ones either... which any vendor is willing to provide.

The two biggest, most successful studios in my area are now all Hasselblad ... one that had the means to do anything, and tested the 50MS against IQ180 mentioned above ... that resonates with me more than sales hype. Hassey also has a laundry list of endorsements from big named shooters all over the world ... some who use MS cameras.

So what? Either the system fits your needs or it doesn't ... and all these systems either shine or are deficient in one way or another, depending on specific applications.

Not that I care all that much anymore, I'm seriously trimming my H4D/60 MFD system for use in studio almost exclusively where it shines the best ... and keeping the S2 for all the rest.

As to being committed to a system making it hard to swap ... I'd imagine there are plenty of Phamiya camera users that feel trapped in the same way ... but are loath to admit it after that kind of investment.

There is no perfect solution, just one that fits your needs better.

-Marc
 

rhsu

New member
Having looked briefly at the "MF is dead" threads and the IQ2 series, I see no discussion of the thing that - to my eyes - makes the greatest contribution to image quality. That is multishot. For studio and other static work, I just love those images - like an achromatic but with color.

I used the H4D50MS briefly. What gorgeous pixels! ...
I've seen Sinar eXact file and the workflow from the back and you should include this option in the future when looking again for MS backs - ie when comparing with "image quality". My experience with MS has been with the early days of Imacon and it ended there.
 
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