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Help Selecting an Alpa setup.

young'ee

New member
Cambo....Alpa.... Cambo...Alpa......hmmmmm. Need to look into this. At the moment i am blind sided by sheer beauty (well not quite true - lens playtime on the FPS is what got me here in this mess - and you can see i sit here reading/posting all day, ignoring my work that is piling up, so in deep now)

Good part is wifey is happy for me to spend all the money, so half the battle is won. But there is Soooo much to buy when one is starting from zero.
 

Guy Mancuso

Administrator, Instructor
The Alpa's are a 10 when it comes to the beauty of the camera they are really nicely engineered and just a thing of beauty. The Cambo's are also nicely engineered and very nice looking but a lot of folks lean more to the beauty side of just shooting a really nice looking camera. There is nothing wrong with this you spend a lot of money and you want to hold a piece of art in your hand. Alpa's tend to be a piece of art all by itself. Totally get that side of owning one. The Cambo's are just designed to have most of the movements already built in to the body the rise/ fall and side movements without the adapter like you need on the MAX. Now tilt and swing on the Cambo's are in the lens mounts not all lenses have it and they cost about 1500 more per lens to have that mount. Alpa uses tilt adapters but there are some restrictions as well to focal length. I'll let the Alpa folks touch on this. Frankly they are both wonderful systems that are compact and a joy to shoot. They are just different setups that you need to understand how they function.
 

Guy Mancuso

Administrator, Instructor
Now and the Alpa folks can answer this far better than me but if your going FPS than owning the MAX makes more sense as some parts are interchangeable and maybe they can touch on this aspect of it as I'm not sure but good info to know. Since I think you can share the use of accessories on both of them.
 

Guy Mancuso

Administrator, Instructor
At some point this thread maybe a good sticky thread on how to buy a tech cam. Lots of great info going on here.
 

Pemihan

Well-known member
I too chose the Cambo WRS for the rise/fall and side-side shift at the same time and the compact and reasonable lightweight body. No regrets.

Peter
 

Ken_R

New member
Cambo....Alpa.... Cambo...Alpa......hmmmmm. Need to look into this. At the moment i am blind sided by sheer beauty (well not quite true - lens playtime on the FPS is what got me here in this mess - and you can see i sit here reading/posting all day, ignoring my work that is piling up, so in deep now)

Good part is wifey is happy for me to spend all the money, so half the battle is won. But there is Soooo much to buy when one is starting from zero.
The big three in tech cams are Arca Swiss, Alpa and Cambo.

If you want tilt with any lens you mount, want shift AND rise and fall on the back, and want all that built into the (not too large) body and don't like dealing with adapters the Arca Swiss RM3Di is the choice. (Arca does offer some nice adapters to fine tune your setup but they are not essential for some features)

If you want a compact body with good shift and rise/fall capability built in then the Cambo are nice and compact. They do require each lens you want tilt on to be mounted with the tilt mount which adds cost to every lens and the tilt mechanism is somewhat in the way of the focusing and shutter/aperture settings of some lenses.

If you want a LOT of flexibility and do not mind dealing with a bunch of adapters (and in the case of the Max and XY, larger sized body when all is set and done) the ALPA and its extensive adapter selection allows you to configure a camera just like you want it. They do offer the FPS and adapters to several lens lines. Due to ALPA's having similar front and rear mounts you can mount a lens on the front or rear, same with the backs and any adapter.

My choice was the ARCA RM3Di but as usual YMMV. :D
 

narikin

New member
Is it really possible to use 2 x 17mm T/S ?
Yes. if you can use 1 x34mm adapter on a SB lens on a Max, then you can use 1 x17mm on the front and 1 x17mm on the back and get a combo of tilt on the lens and swing on the back, for example. You will need to work tethered if movements are getting this complicated, but thats not a huge problem, even on location - see the recent thread here about tethering to the Surface Pro tablet.
 

narikin

New member
Cambo....Alpa.... Cambo...Alpa......hmmmmm. Need to look into this. At the moment i am blind sided by sheer beauty (well not quite true - lens playtime on the FPS is what got me here in this mess - and you can see i sit here reading/posting all day, ignoring my work that is piling up, so in deep now)

Good part is wifey is happy for me to spend all the money, so half the battle is won. But there is Soooo much to buy when one is starting from zero.

It's really a case of picking the right tool for the right job. What I like about the Alpa system is it is just that - a system. You can go ultra small and light with one body (TC) or 4 way shift movements with multi panel stitching giving very high resolution with another (Max/XY), or Focal Plane Shutter (FPS) with a third body for easy use on the go, and faster action and ability to use Canon/Nikon/Hassy/Mamiya optics. Same lenses, backs, accessories flipped from one body to another according to that days needs. If you are only ever going to do one of those, then just buy the 1 single body you need - be it Alpa or Cambo or Arca/ whatever. If you are going to do many other types of imagery, or just want to keep those options open, then look for a rich system worth investing in.
 

Sarnia

New member
Has anybody ever used a decentered (in the up position) SK Apo-Digitar 47mm XL on an Alpa STC?

I can't decide whether to buy a SK 24mm XL (equivalent to a 17mm lens in 135 format on my Leaf Aptus 75) or whether to stitch left & right with my 47mm XL on an STC. I'm also unsure of what horizontal equivalence 18mm's of shift left & right with a 47mm lens would end up giving me. Is there a clever spreadsheet somewhere?

Any experiences gratefully received.
 
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