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Sinar F2 for P30+?

Hi all,
I got Sinar F2 4x5 camera with Sinaron W90, Sinaron S210, Sinaron W155.
Which got me wondering:
What do I need to use my Phase One P30+with it in studio?
And can I expect good performance of the P30+ with the lenses?

My thought was to use it for food photography and studio portraits.

Thank you in advance!
 

FromJapan

Member
The P30+ has micro-lenses, that may cause a more pronounced color cast ( as compared to backs that have no micro-lenses) when camera movements are applied. I'm not 100% sure, but I believe this would be more applicable to shorter lenses. Perhaps Doug can chime in.

All you need to start using the back with the Sinar is a Graflok adapter, or a sliding back like the PhaseOne FlexAdapter. The lenses are on the longer side for digital use. They are actually rebadged Rodenstock lenses, and the 155mm is a Grandagon for the 8x10 format! They should serve your purposes, unless you are looking for absolute razor-sharp images at very large enlargement sizes.

Kumar
 

Louis Novak

New member
When using a digital back with micro lenses especially the P30+(P65+ excluded from this) the light rays can hit the micro lenses at extreme angles casing a color cast that most of the time can't be corrected. This is more prevalent with Wider angle lenses as well as using movements.
 

dougpeterson

Workshop Member
The P30+ has micro-lenses, that may cause a more pronounced color cast ( as compared to backs that have no micro-lenses) when camera movements are applied. I'm not 100% sure, but I believe this would be more applicable to shorter lenses. Perhaps Doug can chime in.
It's worse than that. Color cast starts earlier and is stronger with a P30+ vs. other backs but at a strong enough angle the P30+ no longer sees light at all.

You should consider wide-angles completely off limits and moderate-length lenses to be workable-with-minimal-movement. Long lenses shouldn't be that problematic but you should avoid strong movements. As you can imagine these are fairly strong limitations; you might consider an upgrade to a P40+ or P65+ or even a downgrade to a P25+ or a crossgrade to an Aptus II 7 all of which deal with strong light angles much better than the P30+ which is by far the worst back in the Phase/Leaf lineup for this application.

Also if you haven't found it yet here is a lens focal length visualizer to help you visualize how long a lens will be on medium format. All three lenses will be long with a P30+ and the 210 will be quite long. Not sure if you were aware of this, or if you were thinking about their looks in terms of how they render for larger formats.

Also their maximum apertures will limit any shallow depth of field effects, especially since older lenses typically need to be stopped down more to be sharp enough for modern aesthetics (this of course is opinion, so if detail and crispness of the in-focus areas is not important to your vision, or if you want to do portraits with deep DOF, this may not be relevant to you). f/8 on 8x10 is extremely narrow DOF but on medium format it's middle-of-the-road.
 

MaxKißler

New member
Hi all,
I got Sinar F2 4x5 camera with Sinaron W90, Sinaron S210, Sinaron W155.
Which got me wondering:
What do I need to use my Phase One P30+with it in studio?
And can I expect good performance of the P30+ with the lenses?

My thought was to use it for food photography and studio portraits.

Thank you in advance!
As others have already mentioned, the P30+ is one of the backs less suited for movements. Nevertheless, I wouldn't worry too much about it if you don't shift too much. In my opinion, shifting causes stronger color casts and should be avoided with the P30+ but you should be fine if you use tilts and swings with longer lenses and if you don't get too close to the edge of the image circle.
I'd say the 210mm is the perfect lens for food photography. You can use any f-stop down to f16 (though with visible diffraction already setting in at f16) and get increadibly sharp and crisp results, the real struggle is to nail focus though. Even at "f9,5" where you have the optimum aperture, you still have a lot of unsharp areas (even more if you set Scheimpflug accordingly). So this lens should be perfectly suited for the tasks at hand.
I often found my Sironar N 150mm too short for stillife and especially food.

But before upgrading your back, I'd suggest you look at a second hand Sinar P2 because it'll allow you to set Scheinpflug without having to readjust your framing. The F2 doesn't support this feature and is (this is my very personal opinion) no joy to use...

However, I do recommend you forget about doing portraits with this setup. It's in my opinion too much try and error and therefore a waste of time...
 

Shashin

Well-known member
I have use a Linhof c679 with a p25+ and 90mm Rodenstock for portraits--and I shoot full frame and don't crop. I can't see why you could not use your camera for the same thing.
 
Thank you, all very much!
I'm going to stick to the P30+ for a while longer. Just thought it would be interesting to try something with this set up.

Also if you haven't found it yet here is a lens focal length visualizer to help you visualize how long a lens will be on medium format. All three lenses will be long with a P30+ and the 210 will be quite long. Not sure if you were aware of this, or if you were thinking about their looks in terms of how they render for larger formats.
Thank you, Doug. I wasn't aware of this. Really helpful!
 
I'd say the 210mm is the perfect lens for food photography. You can use any f-stop down to f16 (though with visible diffraction already setting in at f16) and get increadibly sharp and crisp results, the real struggle is to nail focus though. Even at "f9,5" where you have the optimum aperture, you still have a lot of unsharp areas (even more if you set Scheimpflug accordingly). So this lens should be perfectly suited for the tasks at hand.
I often found my Sironar N 150mm too short for stillife and especially food.

However, I do recommend you forget about doing portraits with this setup. It's in my opinion too much try and error and therefore a waste of time...
So I should be good using it for food if I don't use too much shift?

I'm a huge camera addict, so wasting time won't be a problem. I was always a fan of large format portraits with really shallow DOF. Will I be able to achieve similar effect with this set up if it will be only in black&white?
 

MaxKißler

New member
So I should be good using it for food if I don't use too much shift?

I'm a huge camera addict, so wasting time won't be a problem. I was always a fan of large format portraits with really shallow DOF. Will I be able to achieve similar effect with this set up if it will be only in black&white?
It seems I misunderstood you: I thought you wanted to shoot portraits with the P30+ on your Sinar. Shooting film is a totally different story. Film is much more forgiving in terms of minor focussing inaccuracies and due to the larger format you will be much closer to your subjects (in order to fill the frame) resulting in even less depth of field. It's not very easy, in fact it's rather difficult but still doable. You will be having a lot of fun. ;)

Again, I recommend the 210mm for both of the genres you mentioned. It's field of view with 4x5 film is almost equivalent to the field of view of a 55mm lens in 35mm terms. So I wouln't go shorter for head and shoulder portraits as it'll only distort the faces.
 
It seems I misunderstood you: I thought you wanted to shoot portraits with the P30+ on your Sinar. Shooting film is a totally different story. Film is much more forgiving in terms of minor focussing inaccuracies and due to the larger format you will be much closer to your subjects (in order to fill the frame) resulting in even less depth of field. It's not very easy, in fact it's rather difficult but still doable. You will be having a lot of fun. ;)

Again, I recommend the 210mm for both of the genres you mentioned. It's field of view with 4x5 film is almost equivalent to the field of view of a 55mm lens in 35mm terms. So I wouln't go shorter for head and shoulder portraits as it'll only distort the faces.
I was talking about using P30+ with Sinar for portraits. And since movements cause color cast, I would simply convert them to black and white.
 

MaxKißler

New member
Well in this case, just give it a try. I know for sure this won't work for me but of course that doesn't mean the same applies to you. I'm curious to see some images, so please share the experience you'll gain.
 
Well in this case, just give it a try. I know for sure this won't work for me but of course that doesn't mean the same applies to you. I'm curious to see some images, so please share the experience you'll gain.
Thank you for the help, Max and everyone. Now it will be depend on how much it will cost to fit P30+ on the camera.

Would this adapter work: Moveable Sliding Adapter FOR Mamiya 645 Leaf Phase ONE Back TO 4x5 Large Format | eBay

Additionally I would need a sync cable with wake up cable (or something like OneShot cable release), correct? Anything else that I will need?
 

MaxKißler

New member
Yes, this adapter will work. You just have to remove the 4x5 focusing screen on the rear standard and fit this sliding back.
But be prepared, the focusing screen that comes with this cheap sliding adapter is of real bad quality. Even with a 4x magnifier you'll see concentric grinding marks on the screen. So I replaced mine with an original Hasselblad V focus screen which works great. There was just one drawback, I had to adjust the height of the screen manually to allign for perfect focus.

BTW, I switched system and now use a Hasselblad H2. Hence I can no longer use my sliding back adapter. If you are interested on a great deal, just send me a pm.
 
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