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My personal test on the Phase one xf

joegl

Member
Last week I received my brand new Phase one XF with the IQ 250 back.

Most of my time i do editorial stuff and portraits for magazines, and long term photographic book and exhibition projects.
I started my DMF career with my loved Hasselblad 500 cm and an p30 Phase one back, went through several Mamiya und Phase one bodys. I was waiting nearly 8 years for the waist level finder, actually I made one myself with an mamiya af. ( see pictures below)
My local dealer gave me an excellent upgrade price on my Phase one DF an the P30+, so here I am.


After 8 weeks delay the package arrived, and because I went the upgrade way, there was no trolley and other fancy stuff, just the back, the body some battery, thats it. And thats all I need.
Overall view:
I do like the design, I do like old Volvos, the mechanical look, no ergo smoothies curves, and no fancy design gimmicks. It fits perfect in my hand, and I do really not feel the difference in the weight.
The prismen finder pops of very easily and fits perfectly back on the body. The eye correction button looks a bit loose, I hope it will stay longer at its place than it looks.
The wheels and button for the camera operation are perfectly designed, and for my hands on the right places. You got thousands combination of ups and downs, correction etc settings, but now after one week of shooting I got used to it. Excellent ist the third wheel for fast ISO settings, very useful when you shoot editorial and the light changes very often. The touch screen on the camera works perfect it has a light sensor and switches on the light when its getting dark,very useful, the scroll down menu is a bit confusing, but maybe i´ll do need another week.
I´m not sure how dust and water resistant the body is, time will tell.

The only point wich is a real disappointment, the bodys mirror sound is to loud…… everybody is turning around after the first picture, then everybody knows that you are there. It sound like its the mirror, or the af sensor which makes this noise when its going up. Please Phase one, work on this.

The back.
I got a demo version of the IQ 250, which is miles ahead of the p30+ where I`m coming from
It fits prefect to my needs, from 100 to 6400, lovely files. I´m no pixel peeper, I know there is grain in higher ISO, it always has been, and it always will be. But I can shoot pictures now which wasn´t possible for me a month ago ( with my old back)

I love working with medium format. There will always be faster, smaller, cheaper, higher Iso, lower noise cameras in the world around. But I don´t want faster, and smaller, hm maybe cheaper :)). But the success in my 20 years of business comes always with technic thats fits my needs, pleasures my eyes and my hands. Because i do work with them every day.

Yes its a lot of money but ….. .
 

aztwang

Member
Nice to hear and well said......

"I love working with medium format. There will always be faster, smaller, cheaper, higher Iso, lower noise cameras in the world around. But I don´t want faster, and smaller, hm maybe cheaper :)). But the success in my 20 years of business comes always with technic thats fits my needs, pleasures my eyes and my hands. Because i do work with them every day.

Yes its a lot of money but ….. ."
 

joegl

Member
on the left side you see my self-made Mamiya AFD waist level finder model.
Took me a some time, but its fully functional, except metering.

Because my new IQ 250 doesn`t fit anymore, its on his way to the phase one center in cologne
 
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