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A switch: Phase One to Nikon.........

MrSmith

Member
One less competitor to worry about IMO. The quality of photographs in the article kind of demonstrate the point.
Your own images are no more valid than those in the article.
He is obviously doing well in his sector of the photography industry and has refined his tools and working methods.
The idea that MF somehow elevates you above somebody with a small sensor is a cretinous notion. I abandoned that kind of thinking when I sold my 10x8 to some doe eyed amateur moving on from a Leica fixation.
 
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Abstraction

Well-known member
I'm actually very interested in the reliability issues he's describing. I heard rumblings about that. What are your experiences as far as reliability is concerned? Does the camera have a tendency to lock up? I also noticed that he was talking specifically about the camera, not the back.
 

GrahamWelland

Subscriber & Workshop Member
I'm actually very interested in the reliability issues he's describing. I heard rumblings about that. What are your experiences as far as reliability is concerned? Does the camera have a tendency to lock up? I also noticed that he was talking specifically about the camera, not the back.
TBH the AF/AFD/AFDII/DF/DF+ system has always had the tendency to lock up just when you least wanted it to. His observations with that camera are spot on. It is also why I left the Mamiya/Kodak DCS645M system the first time around with MF Digital.

I have not had any issues with my XF in the field by comparison. Will I find a situation where it messes up? Yes, I know I will (I've seen at least one lock up in the wild but not mine) but it seems orders of magnitude better than the DF/DF+ that this person baled from. That said, the XF is still being actively developed with new functionality and bug fixes coming out regularly.

I dare say that if you looked and asked around you'd find similar stories of people leaving Hasselblad, Leica, Nikon, Canon etc etc for new destinations such as Sony.
 

fotografz

Well-known member
IMHO, the old adage "Horses For Courses" is still highly valid … IF … you are able to define the different "Courses" you will be running.

Personally, it is a crystal clear distinction for me. I can line list exactly how I use each piece of gear and why. When and if technology alters that, or my work demands change, then that list can change.

How other's may use certain gear often has zero influence on my choices … unless they are engaged in similar tasks:

For example, use of 18 to 24 meg 135mm cameras for weddings I once did on a regular basis. There I needed AF speed, higher ISO, good zoom ranges and choice of primes with faster apertures, a good speed-light system and dual card capture. That usually meant a Canon or Nikon. I just sold the last of those types of camera (a Sony A99). At the time, the Sony Mirrorless cameras couldn't quite make it for weddings in the same way. They just now are getting closer, but I no longer need a wedding specific system … so I now have a Sony A7R and A7R-II.

MFD is much easier for me to distinguish from any 135 format system.

Every MFD system I've had uses leaf shutter lenses. V system sync to 1/500. H system to 1/800. Now a S system to 1/1000.

It isn't a matter of just using leaf shutter sync when needed (which does frequently happen) … I also create visual scenarios that require it. It is part of my conceptual visual thinking.

The Sony A7R-II can NOT do that. On the other hand, like the Sony, the S camera can shoot focal plane shutter work with the same set of leaf-shutter CS lenses, and the S lenses are fast aperture for MF.

For example, one of my shooting partners and I will be doing a beach shoot in Florida. We will get ideal early light and segue to not so great midday sun. Using a Hensel Porty 1200L pack we can over-power that sun … but the best his A7R-II can do is 1/180 sync … I'll have up to 1/1000 to control the background ambience.

Because I use lighting a lot, that advantage alone makes MFD worth it to me … and it isn't the only reason. However, those other reasons have been beaten to death in another similar thread.

Size is not an issue when in studio … the camera is on a heavy duty tripod … on location I have transport options including a beach trolly with fat wheels, When driving I ALWAYS take the MFD kit as well as a smaller walk-round no-brainer; on planes I use the Airport Extreme roller case.

I do appreciate the ease and convenience of the Sony mirror-less cameras … which is why I have that "Horse" to run certain courses.:)

- Marc
 

Abstraction

Well-known member
TBH the AF/AFD/AFDII/DF/DF+ system has always had the tendency to lock up just when you least wanted it to. His observations with that camera are spot on. It is also why I left the Mamiya/Kodak DCS645M system the first time around with MF Digital.

I have not had any issues with my XF in the field by comparison. Will I find a situation where it messes up? Yes, I know I will (I've seen at least one lock up in the wild but not mine) but it seems orders of magnitude better than the DF/DF+ that this person baled from. That said, the XF is still being actively developed with new functionality and bug fixes coming out regularly.

I dare say that if you looked and asked around you'd find similar stories of people leaving Hasselblad, Leica, Nikon, Canon etc etc for new destinations such as Sony.
I shot with Mamiya m645 and c220 back in the day. The 645 series was notoriously bad. There were always issues with frame spacing and advance mechanism. Those would constantly fail. The c220 was bullet proof, as was the RB67. Hasselblad owners were also unhappy because the backs used to fail constantly. They needed to be babied. The ones who seemed generally happy with their system were the Bronica owners. Those seemed to be very solid.

I haven't heard much complaining with Canon or Nikon, but the Sony and Pentax people complain more about the service, the turn around time and the quality of service, rather than the cameras themselves. Naturally, every make camera might fail, it's more about how wide spread the problems are.
 

jerome_m

Member
For example, one of my shooting partners and I will be doing a beach shoot in Florida. We will get ideal early light and segue to not so great midday sun. Using a Hensel Porty 1200L pack we can over-power that sun … but the best his A7R-II can do is 1/180 sync … I'll have up to 1/1000 to control the background ambience.
Just a quick note. If you can live with a fixed lens, the Sony RX1 has a central shutter and syncs to 1/2000s. I mention this because apparently few people realised that the RX1 can do that and, in some cases, a small camera with a fast sync may be very useful.
 

CSP

New member
The ones who seemed generally happy with their system were the Bronica owners. Those seemed to be very solid.
funny you say this, i absolute agree, when i was at the beginning of my career i had a very complete etrsi system and loved it. the fim magazin design was very solid and easy to handle compaired to the flimsy hasselblad back and the body was extrem reliable. very different to my business partners mamiy 645 which had more service than shooting time.
 

Abstraction

Well-known member
funny you say this, i absolute agree, when i was at the beginning of my career i had a very complete etrsi system and loved it. the fim magazin design was very solid and easy to handle compaired to the flimsy hasselblad back and the body was extrem reliable. very different to my business partners mamiy 645 which had more service than shooting time.
Yeah, the m645 was a bitch. I had two cameras go on me at a job. You can imagine the stress I had to go through. I carried the c220 as my third backup. I figured if I ever have a situation where I have all 3 cameras fail on me at a job including my c220, I'll just quit and do something else.

The Bronicas were like tanks. The ETR and the SQ both. There were never wide spread issues with them, at least none that I heard of. I made a mistake of buying into the m645 because I liked the instant return mirror and the m645 were the only cameras that had it.
 

CSP

New member
For example, one of my shooting partners and I will be doing a beach shoot in Florida. We will get ideal early light and segue to not so great midday sun. Using a Hensel Porty 1200L pack we can over-power that sun … but the best his A7R-II can do is 1/180 sync … I'll have up to 1/1000 to control the background ambience.

Because I use lighting a lot, that advantage alone makes MFD worth it to me … and it isn't the only reason. However, those other reasons have been beaten to death in another similar thread.


I do appreciate the ease and convenience of the Sony mirror-less cameras … which is why I have that "Horse" to run certain courses.:)

- Marc

.. you are a a nice guy so you will tell your friend for sure to bring a ND 0,9 filter to capture the same look.. no ?
 

Jack

Sr. Administrator
Staff member
.. you are a a nice guy so you will tell your friend for sure to bring a ND 0,9 filter to capture the same look.. no ?
No offense, but you appear to not fully understand lighting science. That 3-stop ND also kills the flash output at the same rate it attenuates the Sun, so unless you are working very close to a subject or have an uber powerful strobe -- which is not currently available for portable outdoor use -- you cannot achieve the same result with an ND and slower shutter. Moreover, you frequently need to synch at 1/1500th -- 3 stops over 1/180th is only 1/750th, so we'd need a 4-stop ND and twice as many porta-packs to generate 2x more output than the first set.

So yeah, it could be done with a lot of extra money in porta-packs and heads and a lot more money for assistants to schlep them all, but frankly not nearly as convenient or cost-effective as having the proper tool (leaf-shutter synch) to begin with.

Cheers,
 

fotografz

Well-known member
Just a quick note. If you can live with a fixed lens, the Sony RX1 has a central shutter and syncs to 1/2000s. I mention this because apparently few people realised that the RX1 can do that and, in some cases, a small camera with a fast sync may be very useful.
Thanks! Actually, I did know that. It made that little Sony a camera of interest.:thumbup:

The question I have about 1/2000 full sync is how they achieve that since most radio senders top out at 1/500 sync and only a few top out at 1/1000+. Very interesting subject. Does the Sony RX have a PC port? I suppose it could work if the camera was hard-wired to the strobe. It may be that the 1/2000 is mostly for speed-light work (???). I admit to not knowing enough about how this camera delivers 1/2000 sync.

The other issue with sync beyond 1/800 is the strobe's flash duration rating at or near full power. You have to watch that you do not exceed the flash duration of many strobe units. My strobes just make it at 1/1000 flash duration when the transmitter is set to the speed setting of 1/1000.

But it is all a moot point … Unfortunately, a fixed focal length doesn't work for me, especially when shooting people which 90% of my work involves.

I can be shooting a wide angle 35mm MF lens for a full length "environmental portrait" (think landscape with a person in it), or a group of people … then the next minute a waist up framing with a normal MF 70mm , then onto a more portrait oriented set of shots using a telephoto from 120mm to 180mm. I have those leaf-shutter lenses in those focal lengths for real reasons.

- Marc
 

kdphotography

Well-known member
....
The question I have about 1/2000 full sync is how they achieve that since most radio senders top out at 1/500 sync and only a few top out at 1/1000+. Very interesting subject. Does the Sony RX have a PC port? I suppose it could work if the camera was hard-wired to the strobe. It may be that the 1/2000 is mostly for speed-light work (???). I admit to not knowing enough about how this camera delivers 1/2000 sync.

...
I don't know much about Sony, as it really is just a P&S camera for me. But with regard to wireless flash sync triggering----you can set PWIII to fast mode and sync up to ~1/1600. Profoto Air transmitter also needs to be set to "fast" mode, but with Profoto, you already knew that. And, egads, yes you can wirelessly trigger with at 1/1600 flash sync with the cheapo Paul Buff cybersync.

ken
 

jerome_m

Member
The question I have about 1/2000 full sync is how they achieve that since most radio senders top out at 1/500 sync and only a few top out at 1/1000+. Very interesting subject. Does the Sony RX have a PC port? I suppose it could work if the camera was hard-wired to the strobe. It may be that the 1/2000 is mostly for speed-light work (???). I admit to not knowing enough about how this camera delivers 1/2000 sync.

The other issue with sync beyond 1/800 is the strobe's flash duration rating at or near full power. You have to watch that you do not exceed the flash duration of many strobe units. My strobes just make it at 1/1000 flash duration when the transmitter is set to the speed setting of 1/1000.
Quite frankly, I have never tried a studio flash with the RX1. But I see no reason why sync would not work with a cable (using a PC adapter for the hot shoe), because the sync problems are a specific problem of radio transmitters and don't happen with cables. The flash duration of studio flashed would still be a problem at 1/2000s, however.

But in practice, what is important is that the RX1 has a central shutter and syncs at speed useful with studio flashes outside, like 1/1000s...
 

fotografz

Well-known member
.. you are a a nice guy so you will tell your friend for sure to bring a ND 0,9 filter to capture the same look.. no ?
What Jack said.

Don't worry, a lot of people make that same mistake thinking you can ND it, and get the same result as a leaf-shutter solution.

There are a few other advantages besides just beating back an overly bright background behind a subject.

For example, using the lowest non-pull ISO, I can shoot at 1/1000 sync and use a wider aperture to control the DOF better than I can at 1/180 sync.

Conversely, I've used a higher sync speed to absolutely kill all ambient lit clutter behind an indoor subject while still maintaining a high quality ISO setting and exactly controlling the light on that subject.

Don't confuse this with HSS available with most speed-lights. A good speed-light yields around 70W/s of lighting energy, where the average strobe delivers 500W/s (my Porty does 1200W/s). When using HSS on a Speed-light the total energy is spread out over a series of smaller flashes so a faster shutter can be used. But you have to be pretty close to the subject and not need a lot of light (like just some fill).

Of great interest to me is Profoto's recent addition of HSS to their OCF B1 and B2 TTL battery strobes. Currently, it can be used with Nikon and Canon cameras. HSS works the same way as with a speed-light, thus weakens the amount of light on the subject … BUT … you are weakening a total of 500W/s as opposed to 70W/s of a speed-light. That could work in quite a few situations.

Rumor has it that Profoto will include Sony as a supported TTL camera. Remains to be seen whether the HSS feature is also supported. Hope so!!!

- Marc
 

CSP

New member
No offense, but you appear to not fully understand lighting science. That 3-stop ND also kills the flash output at the same rate it attenuates the Sun, so unless you are working very close to a subject or have an uber powerful strobe -- which is not currently available for portable outdoor use -- you cannot achieve the same result with an ND and slower shutter. Moreover, you frequently need to synch at 1/1500th -- 3 stops over 1/180th is only 1/750th, so we'd need a 4-stop ND and twice as many porta-packs to generate 2x more output than the first set.

So yeah, it could be done with a lot of extra money in porta-packs and heads and a lot more money for assistants to schlep them all, but frankly not nearly as convenient or cost-effective as having the proper tool (leaf-shutter synch) to begin with.

Cheers,
no problem jack but i do understand the relation between flash power, nd filters and shutters very well. the main question is what look do we want - an unnatural day for night style or a more balanced result with the flash as key light. if it is the first than yes you will need more flash power with an nd filter and the higher sync cameras has a clear advantage but if you are for the later it works very well in practice with just the use of an weak nd filter. i did use this technic in the past for a couple of people shootings most of the time at noon on sunny austrian glaciers with my elinchrom ranger and i did never run into not having enough flash power.

but when you look closer it gets more tricky anyway and another problem appears. high sync speed can come with the penalty that you loose some of the emitted power. a hensel porty needs 1/300 sec to deliver his 1200 J so depending on the flash head the power pack, the shutter speed and also how you tripgerr the flash, wirless or with a cord you end up with very different power results minimizing some of the advantages of higher sync speeds.

the last point i also think you made an error with you f stop calculations - my hasselblad h3dII for example syncs at 1/800 my sony a7r2 at 250 so the hasselblad has a speed advantage of 1 2/3 stops but in practice it is enough to compensate the flash power by 1 1/2 stop because of the better dynamic range of the sony.



christian
 
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