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The STC and Rodie 40 have arrived but...

tashley

Subscriber Member
...guess who didn't order a Sync cable...

Purchased all the STC kit from UK dealer Linhof Studio, Paula is very helpful but when it arrived and I realised the one thing I need but don't have and with a holiday weekend ahead, I called Brian at Dtek and he had one in the post to me within minutes, next day delivery, for which I am hugely grateful.

The STC kit looks and feels great. The Rodie also looks pretty cool, if quite large - so the whole setup with an IQ180 on it is quite large and heavy. The engineering seems really nice though I am not convinced by the HPF ring, it took quite a while to fit and is very apt to slip off the collar on which it needs to sit as you try to adjust it to infinity.

I also think it's funny, maybe quite naively sweet, how the very few instructions that come with the kit (and there are IMHO not as many as there could be) seem to be scissor cut photocopies. None the worse for that I suppose but it is a counterpoint to the premium feel of the materials and construction.

So now I just need to get that darned sync cable and start shooting. I purchased a new Capture One Complete LCC kit which seems quite neat (though possibly a little off-white?) and am all ready to rock.

As a little mess around, I stuck the back on the camera (had to use the little back mount shim 0.3mm to stop it wobbling around) and tried live view on a tripod: it seems quite possible to compose and even focus that way - or am I being overly hopeful?

Any tips'n'tricks from other STC/Rodie/IQ180 users most welcome. I will report back once I get shooting and may even share an image or two if I capture anything worthwhile!
 
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tashley

Subscriber Member
They come with small shims now - not the square mask shims for focus tuning, but a small one about four cm long and 1/5 cm wide that just fits into one side of the back adaptor plate. You get four in different sizes and mine is now nice and snug...
 

GrahamWelland

Subscriber & Workshop Member
Congratlations btw on the outfit. Regarding the shims and adapters it's obviously all change at the top these days :)
 

PeterL

Member
If the HPF focus rings are installed correctly, they should not slide at all. Did you use the supplied O-rings to prevent it from slipping? I'm sure you did, just asking....... :)

Congratulations on the outfit, it's a good choice.

Cheers, -Peter
 

tashley

Subscriber Member
Hi Peter,
As per the rest of the kit there were no significant instructions so I looked at the Alpa website video guide and it said that the O rings were only for the Schneider lenses and not for the Rodenstocks. I got it right in the end without an O ring but it took about 45 minutes...
 

narikin

New member
Oh, you'll need that sync lead. Just know with the back on Zero Latency, it eats batteries, so be sure to carry multiple spares.

Once you are happy with your outfit, you'll have to 'invest' in a single shot cable, either by Alpa or Kapture Group (are there others?). Then you can work on Normal Latency, and have much less battery needs.

Kapture group one is a bit ungainly but great for tripod work - about $250
The Alpa one is good for walkabout press button use, and tripod, and altogether a neater package but is about $900.

Welcome to the world of Alpa where they wash each component in Unicorn tears.
 

tashley

Subscriber Member
I will probably get the Alpa one - I had the Kapture on my Cambo and thought it ungainly and unreliable. But my re-entry into MFDB world is intended to be slow enough such as not to burn up all my cash in one go, hence the cheapo approach until I see what the lens and sensor can do... ;-)
 

gazwas

Active member
But my re-entry into MFDB world is intended to be slow enough such as not to burn up all my cash in one go, hence the cheapo approach until I see what the lens and sensor can do... ;-)
Yeh right, now that makes me laugh! :ROTFL:

Hope you find your Zen in the Alpa Tim.
 

Paul2660

Well-known member
+1 on the Kapture group cable. Works great, for me much more accurate with Copal shutters than the Phase wake up cable and cable release (2 step approach). if you get one, look into the one with the longer sync cable (I believe it's the one called the standard, not the wide angle).

Cost in U.S. is now $295.00, they have dropped the price $100.00

Paul Caldwell
 

tashley

Subscriber Member

torger

Active member
I think shimming back adapters to correct flange distance cannot be the right way to do it! Users should not accept that a digital back costing tens of thousands of dollars to have problem in alignment, and as far as I know the backs do have internal shims so if they just care at the factory they can be as precise as they should be. The back should be sent back to the factory and be corrected, or else the manufacturers may get sloppy :)

(Then there's the mystery of the design of back mount, H-mount as I have while better than the film-mount V-mount I does not exactly feeling like high precision to me. I would want it to be some screw fastening that press the back snuggly to the camera, rather than some sloppy spring-loaded mechanism. And no long-exposure light leaks please.)
 

Guy Mancuso

Administrator, Instructor
Bucking the trend here. Hated I mean hated the Kapture group cable. I went zero latency on my 160 carried 5 batteries never got past 3 all day shooting . I just made it a habit of turning off the back after a series of shots. Never ran into heat issues and it was far less cumbersome. Just used a cable and separate sync cable to back. I also never shimmed my Cambo. The mounting plates do have some shims for mounting a back to. I did calibrate my lenses though when I used the HPF rings. On the SK its three little screws and I tethered shooting for infinity mark and tightened it down and it was fine.

Frankly no offense but the whole Alpa shimming thing is just some marketing . Problem is if your shimming the camera for one lens what about your other lenses do they fall into place. I shimmed my lenses once I had the mounting plate correctly shimmed to hold my back nice and tight. This way all three of my lenses where correct.
Ill put in here YMMV.

Bottom line there is zero difference between a Alpa and Cambo in this regards they both work essentially the same when it comes to shimming. Cambo actually has four mount screws that you can shim with. Never did that as I felt getting each lens correct was the way to go. My 35XL was way off too.
 

gerald.d

Well-known member
Frankly no offense but the whole Alpa shimming thing is just some marketing.
Hmm. This doesn't look like marketing to me - this looks pretty tangible.

ALPA of Switzerland - Manufacturers of remarkable cameras - News

Problem is if your shimming the camera for one lens what about your other lenses do they fall into place.
I think the idea is that the lenses are calibrated and optimised with regards their mounts, as are the other things between the lens and the back?

As I see it, ALPA are in complete control with regards to the tolerances of every thing they sell - lens mounts, adapters, cameras, and back mounts. The only thing they have no control over is the back itself. IF (and I accept that it's only an "if" without independent testing) the tolerances of the kit ALPA sell is controlled, then there is no reason to suppose that if you shim your back with one lens, then it's the good for all of them.
 

tashley

Subscriber Member
I am totally with Guy on the shooting mode - shot this morning for the first time with zero latency and as long as you switch the back off when doing your aperture and shutter and so on, it doesn't get hot and the batteries last just fine.

Am loving the new gear so far - the Rodie is usually (not always!) quite good to focus just using guess'n'thenLiveView and the ergonomics of the back and the camera are great. I had forgotten what a pleasure the IQ180 interface is.

The files are no longer a knockout after using a D800 for a year - but at that's at 100%. At 50% they are great and that's what counts, even if the Phase shadows aren't quite up to Nikon standards.

The PITA is going back to Capture One. I don't like its sharpening, it's shadow and highlight method and I really really hate that whatever folder I tell it to output TIFF to, it keeps using one I specified 18 months ago. It may be capable of perfect results in some hands, to me it feels unfinished and unintuitive.

But here's a (not at all creatively interesting) shot (50% size here) that I took this morning using LV to focus in bright sunlight at F8. I can live with this ;-)



LCC seems to work very well but I do notice that the LCC shot picks up the subject colour bias (shoot in spring forest and the LCC is very green) and that using it to white balance isn't a great idea. I need to work that one through. Probably best answer is to shoot blank grey sky with the same movements through the LCC sheet, and to shoot a whi bal card for the scene itself. I need to experiment. Any thoughts on this?

I am having fun!
 

jlm

Workshop Member
i'm with guy, sold my capture group cable, adjusted each lens to system (by tweaking the focus ring to get inf focus when at the inf stop) not back to body

re C1:

the way mine works is i open a new session for each shoot labeled "year-month-day=notes" and import raws to it. it automatically creates an "output" subfolder, when i process, tiffs go there.
i used to select the "Tethered" option when importing as it would create and load the imported files into a "Captures" subfolder, but with v 7, i have not been doing this
 

Guy Mancuso

Administrator, Instructor
Hmm. This doesn't look like marketing to me - this looks pretty tangible.

ALPA of Switzerland - Manufacturers of remarkable cameras - News



I think the idea is that the lenses are calibrated and optimised with regards their mounts, as are the other things between the lens and the back?

As I see it, ALPA are in complete control with regards to the tolerances of every thing they sell - lens mounts, adapters, cameras, and back mounts. The only thing they have no control over is the back itself. IF (and I accept that it's only an "if" without independent testing) the tolerances of the kit ALPA sell is controlled, then there is no reason to suppose that if you shim your back with one lens, then it's the good for all of them.
That same argument can be said for Arca and Cambo. Arca uses offsets to make those corrections and Cambo does have that adjustability as well. The real question is what is off if there is something off the body, the lens or the back. I know we can argue this till the cows come home but from what my experience is once I had my back on the mount correctly I found my 35MM XL to be off my 60MM XL to be on the money the 90mm off slightly. Im not buying that every Alpa lens in there mount is absolutely correct to there bother or sister lens in a different focal length. I also dont buy the fact I buy 3 exact Alpa lenses and each one is EXACTLY like the other. Alpa makes wonderful gear dont get me wrong but they use the shimming as a marketing tool as well. Not saying it is not effective but how can you really tell if it is. A HPF ring at 10ft has some play in it, It still is a analogue based system with a focusing ring. There really is no way to actual measure it in a accurate digital fashion. Does this really matter at the end of the day, not really as DOF usually masks it anyway. I agree being as close to perfect as possible is a good thing. But really if anyone has it dead on than I would give it to Arca's setup. Once you have the offsets figured out than your golden.
 

torger

Active member
LCC seems to work very well but I do notice that the LCC shot picks up the subject colour bias (shoot in spring forest and the LCC is very green) and that using it to white balance isn't a great idea.
I'm using RawTherapee generally so I'm not 100% sure how Capture One does LCC correction (flat field correction), but I would guess that it only corrects for the deviations from the average, so the actual overall color (white balance) of your LCC shot does not matter. Possibly one can choose to use it for white balance too (you can't in RawTherapee, and it's is usually a bad idea anyway so I haven't missed it), but I would guess that is not the default? Some C1 power user could explain I'm sure.
 

torger

Active member
But really if anyone has it dead on than I would give it to Arca's setup. Once you have the offsets figured out than your golden.
Alpa's HPF rings is not that high resolved so I would guess that there is some small focus placement error that Arca RM3Di does slightly better. It would be interesting to test. On the other hand I think the Arca has entered overkill territory making the focus ring unnecessarily slow/cumbersome to work with. The Alpa/Cambo seems to have a nice tradeoff. I think it should be standard with HPF ring pre-mounted on all lenses though, I think being able to set exact focus distance in the blind is one of the key features of a pancake camera.
 
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